#3063 Problem with function clock

[yandres]

Following five commands work perfectly with Tcl 8.0 but
have stopped working with TCL8.3 and 8.4.

set timeCurrent [clock format [clock scan seconds]]
set i 2
set twoDaysAfter [clock format [clock
scan "$timeCurrent $i days"]]
set i -2
set twoDaysBefore [clock format [clock
scan "$timeCurrent $i days"]]

The message of Tcl is the following:

"unable to convert date-time string "Tue Feb 08
14:25:41 GMT 2005 -2 days"

[Kevin B KENNY]

Logged In: YES
user_id=99768

I'll have a look at this, but you
should be aware that there are
so many ambiguities in free-form
[clock scan] that the problem may
not be fixed in the 8.4 series.

A better way to get the same effect
would be to use the '-base' option on
the [clock scan] command:

set timeCurrent [clock format [clock seconds]]
set i 2
set twoDaysAfter \
[clock scan "$i days" -base $timeCurrent]
set i -2
set twoDaysBefore \
[clock scan "$i days" -base $timeCurrent]

That should be enough to get your program
running again.

[Kevin B KENNY]

Logged In: YES
user_id=99768

This problem is going to be VERY hard to
fix in the 8.4 series - essentially, a YACC
parser is not appropriate to this sort of
thing. The fixed-format [clock scan] in
8.5 and beyond provides ready ways to
solve this problem, and a workaround has
been presented. Closing this out with
"Won't Fix" in 8.4.