Re: [PATCH] Documentation: fix typos describing date format

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 12, 2024, 16:02 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh6g6po0u.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <pull.1716.git.1712911876943.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>

"blanet via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> From: Xing Xin <xingxin.xx@bytedance.com>
>
> This commit corrects a typographical error found in both
> date-formats.txt and git-fast-import.txt documentation, where the term
> `email format` was mistakenly used instead of `date format`.

Saying "date" is much more correct than "email" ;-). Thanks for noticing both instances.

Show 15 quoted lines

>  Documentation/date-formats.txt    | 2 +-
>  Documentation/git-fast-import.txt | 2 +-
>  2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/date-formats.txt b/Documentation/date-formats.txt
> index 67645cae64f..e24517c496f 100644
> --- a/Documentation/date-formats.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/date-formats.txt
> @@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ Git internal format::
>  	For example CET (which is 1 hour ahead of UTC) is `+0100`.
>  
>  RFC 2822::
> -	The standard email format as described by RFC 2822, for example
> +	The standard date format as described by RFC 2822, for example
>  	`Thu, 07 Apr 2005 22:13:13 +0200`.

RFC 2822 defines it as "date-time" (and this hasn't been updated by RFC 5322). "date" is used to specifically mean "day month year".

    https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2822.html#section-3.3

    date-time       =       [ day-of-week "," ] date FWS time [CFWS]
    day-of-week     =       ([FWS] day-name) / obs-day-of-week
    day-name        =       "Mon" / "Tue" / "Wed" / "Thu" /
                            "Fri" / "Sat" / "Sun"
    date            =       day month year

So the new phrasing may get complain from pedants. Saying "The standard date-time format as described by RFC 2822" is more technically correct, but I actually wonder if we should go in the opposite, looser direction, like

	The timestamp format used by RFC 2822, for example
	...

so that we do not even pretend to use the wording they use in the RFC documents. Doing so makes it in line with "git rev-list --help" which says

	"--date=rfc" shows timestamps in RFC 2822 format, often
        found in e-mail messages.

But that's minor. "date" is fine as-is. The same comment applies to the other hunk.

Thanks.

Show 15 quoted lines

> diff --git a/Documentation/git-fast-import.txt b/Documentation/git-fast-import.txt
> index b2607366b91..0ccede255ea 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-fast-import.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/git-fast-import.txt
> @@ -303,7 +303,7 @@ and some sanity checks on the numeric values may also be performed.
>  	with e.g. bogus timezone values.
>  
>  `rfc2822`::
> -	This is the standard email format as described by RFC 2822.
> +	This is the standard date format as described by RFC 2822.
>  +
>  An example value is ``Tue Feb 6 11:22:18 2007 -0500''.  The Git
>  parser is accurate, but a little on the lenient side.  It is the
>
> base-commit: 436d4e5b14df49870a897f64fe92c0ddc7017e4c