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Doc Bug #76569 Description of “!” And “|” of DateTime::createFromFormat
Submitted: 2018-07-02 22:59 UTC Modified: 2022-06-02 15:40 UTC
Votes:2
Avg. Score:3.0 ± 2.0
Reproduced:2 of 2 (100.0%)
Same Version:1 (50.0%)
Same OS:1 (50.0%)
From: manabu dot matsui at gmail dot com Assigned: derick (profile)
Status: Closed Package: Date/time related
PHP Version: Irrelevant OS: N/A
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
View Developer Edit
 [2018-07-02 22:59 UTC] manabu dot matsui at gmail dot com 
Description:
------------
At http://php.net/manual/en/datetime.createfromformat.php, description of format character “!” And “|” are as follows:

“!”
Resets all fields (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, fraction and timezone information) to the Unix Epoch

“|”
Resets all fields (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, fraction and timezone information) to the Unix Epoch if they have not been parsed yet

And in the rest of this document, the UNIX epoch is explained as follows:

> The Unix epoch is 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.

But actually, they appear to reset to 1970-01-01 00:00:00 in the resulting timezone, not UTC.

% php -d date.timezone=Asia/Tokyo -r 'var_dump(DateTime::createFromFormat("!", ""));'
object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
  ["date"]=>
  string(26) "1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000"
  ["timezone_type"]=>
  int(3)
  ["timezone"]=>
  string(10) "Asia/Tokyo"
}
% php -d date.timezone=Asia/Tokyo -r 'var_dump(DateTime::createFromFormat("!", "")->getTimestamp());'
int(-32400)
% php -r 'var_dump(DateTime::createFromFormat("!", "", new DateTimeZone("Asia/Tokyo")));'
object(DateTime)#2 (3) {
  ["date"]=>
  string(26) "1970-01-01 00:00:00.000000"
  ["timezone_type"]=>
  int(3)
  ["timezone"]=>
  string(10) "Asia/Tokyo"
}

Since the current behavior is more useful, I think this is a problem of documentation.

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 [2018-11-10 16:33 UTC] salmanarshad2000 at yahoo dot com 
I have noticed the same behavior and agree that the documentation needs to be corrected. The documentation seems to suggest that including ! or | inside the format string will result in a datetime with UTC / +00:00 timezone e.g.:

object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
  ["date"]=>
  string(26) "2000-01-01 00:00:00.000000"
  ["timezone_type"]=>
  int(1)
  ["timezone"]=>
  string(6) "+00:00"
}

Or:

object(DateTime)#1 (3) {
  ["date"]=>
  string(26) "2000-01-01 00:00:00.000000"
  ["timezone_type"]=>
  int(2)
  ["timezone"]=>
  string(3) "UTC"
}

But it does not produce the result I assumed by reading the documentation.

Other: the documentation also examples of using "|" and how it differs from "!".
 [2019-01-02 00:47 UTC] girgias@php.net
-Package: Documentation problem +Package: Date/time related -Operating System: Irrelevant +Operating System: N/A
 [2021-10-21 18:52 UTC] cmb@php.net
-Assigned To: +Assigned To: derick
 [2021-10-21 18:52 UTC] cmb@php.net 
I can confirm the reported behavior: <https://3v4l.org/i71Kc> and
<https://3v4l.org/TU9Pu>.  I'm not sure, though, whether it is
intentional that ! and | reset to the default timezone.  Derick,
can you please clarify?
 [2022-06-02 15:40 UTC] derick@php.net
-Status: Assigned +Status: Closed
 [2022-06-02 15:40 UTC] derick@php.net 
The fix for this bug has been committed.
If you are still experiencing this bug, try to check out latest source from https://github.com/php/php-src and re-test.
Thank you for the report, and for helping us make PHP better.

This was already correctly documented as:

Resets all fields (year, month, day, hour, minute, second, fraction and timezone information) to zero-like values ( 0 for hour, minute, second and fraction, 1 for month and day, 1970 for year and UTC for timezone information)
 
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