[Python-Dev] timemodule.c, 2.140

[Brett C.]

Tim Peters wrote:

> [Jp Calderone]
> 
>>  time.strftime() in 2.4a0 places more restrictions on its inputs than
>>does the version in 2.3.x.  Revision 2.140 seems to be where this was
>>introduced.
>>
>>  I believe it is a common use of strftime() to fill out only some
>>fields of the time tuple.  Requiring the day of year and day of week is
>>particularly burdensome.
>>
>>  I have real code that will not work at all on Python 2.4 because of
>>this.  Is there any possiblity of the restriction being removed?
> 
> 
> Yes, but the likelihood would zoom if you opened a bug report about
> it.  This is what alpha releases are for.  IIRC, the change was to
> prevent core dumps on some platforms in some cases.  The sooner you
> file that bug report <wink>, the better the chance somone can
> volunteer enough time to make you happy without reintroducing crashes.

Yeah, that fix was introduced to prevent core dumps when bad info was 
used (usually from using a value that was outside the bounds of 
something, such as a negative, and that leading to indexing outside the 
array's actual size).  See 
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2004-February/042675.html 
for the thread that came up with this solution (which Guido okayed).

-Brett