Why does "cal 9 1752" produce incorrect results?

Chris Torek chris at mimsy.umd.edu
Thu Nov 29 19:55:02 AEST 1990


In article <7895.2752d336 at uwovax.uwo.ca> 2011_552 at uwovax.uwo.ca
(Terry Gaetz (Astronomy, U. Western Ontario)) writes:
>Pope Gregory issued a papal bull in 1582 ordering that the new calendar be
>introduced.  It was adopted immediately by Catholic countries and
>principalities, but the Greek church and the Protestant countries refused.
>The changeover straggled over several centuries - Romania used the Julian 
>calendar until 1919.

(Trust astronomers to know about dates! :-) )

>In September 1752, England and the American colonies adopted the Gregorian
>calendar.  "Cal 9 1752" correctly handles the transition as adopted by
>England and the United States.

Of course, now that Unix is being `internationalized', someone will
have to fix `cal'.  Clearly the right answer is to adopt the System V
convention, and code the rules into an environment variable. :-)

(The above was intended as a sarcastic comment about SV `TZ' rules.
Why POSIX did not just adopt the Arthur Olson approach is beyond me.)
-- 
In-Real-Life: Chris Torek, Univ of MD Comp Sci Dept (+1 301 405 2750)
Domain:	chris at cs.umd.edu	Path:	uunet!mimsy!chris



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