date format changed in focal

[Seth Arnold]

On Focal, date(1) appears to use 12 hour rather than 24 hour format:

$ 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=
$ date
Wed 05 Feb 2020 07:23:03 PM UTC
$ date -u
Wed 05 Feb 2020 07:23:05 PM UTC

It is seriously confusing to see '07' when the time is currently 19:23.

ls(1) still uses 24 hour time:

$ ls -l ubxtool
-rwxrwxr-x 1 sarnold sarnold 874200 Feb 5 18:59 ubxtool

This was very confusing until I noticed the 'PM' in date output.

Xenial:

$ 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=
$ date
Wed Feb 5 11:23:20 PST 2020
$ date -u
Wed Feb 5 19:23:20 UTC 2020

This may be related to https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=24046

Thanks

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: locales 2.30-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-12.15-generic 5.4.8
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-12-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu16
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Feb 5 19:23:48 2020
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=rxvt-unicode-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: glibc
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-01-24 (11 days ago)

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Hi Seth!

My understanding is that the change addresses a previous inconsistency in the en_US locale. Carrying an Ubuntu patch which reverses this upstream glibc change wouldn't be a good idea, right?

If you are opposed to the change, I'd suggest that you file an upstream glibc/localedata bug. With very good arguments. ;)