[Bug 1858883] Re: date utility format unexpectedly changed after upgrade from bionic to focal

[Andreas Hasenack]

I tend to agree, not only for date parsing, but plain "language"
parsing, it's best to force LC_ALL=C before running whatever tool you
want to inspect the output of. I can add a release notes task to this
and update them.

** Also affects: ubuntu-release-notes
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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Title:
  date utility format unexpectedly changed after upgrade from bionic to
  focal

Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu:
  New
Status in coreutils package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  After upgrading my Bionic system to Focal, I noticed a significant
  change in the output of the `date` utility. This could potentially
  cause regressions for those who are relying on a consistent date
  format when using `date` in shell scripts.

  EXPECTED BEHAVIOR
  =================

  I expected to see the same date format that can be seen on Ubuntu
  releases (at least) from Trusty through Bionic:

  $ date -u
  Wed Jan  8 21:00:14 UTC 2020

  ACTUAL BEHAVIOR
  ===============

  On Focal (and Eoan) the following date format is seen by default:

  $ date -u
  Wed 08 Jan 2020 09:00:14 PM UTC

  Note the differences in zero-padding, whitespace, placement of the
  year, and the extraneous "PM" (I had expected to see a 24-hour time).

  FURTHER DETAILS
  ===============

  This machine was originally on Bionic and has been upgraded to
  development releases between Bionic and Focal.

  $ locale
  LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  LANGUAGE=
  LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_ALL=

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