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Re: Personal y2k issue [was: *ping*]



On Sat, 1 Jan 2000, David Alban wrote:

> 
> So I downloaded checkbook balancer version 0.79 (the latest I could
> find).  It seems to be suffering from a bug some perl programmers have
> unwittingly included in their code:  instead of treating the year
> returned by the list context time functions as an integer to be added
> to the number 1900, it seems to be treating it as a string to be
> added to the end of the string "19".  (In the test account I made,
> following my installation of cbb, I noticed the year being stored in
> the file as "19100".) 
> 
> 
> P.S.  Although this isn't exactly a work-related sysadmin question,
>       I figure there have to be sysadmin types on this list who use
>       X11 programs for their personal finances...or am I a
>       trailblazing pioneer? :-)

I don't use X11 to watch my money disappear, but I did have problems with
exactly that perl bug in some legacy code written by my second-order
predecessor.  It seems to be cropping up all over the list.  If anyone has
perl code that builds a four-digit year it's probably a good idea to check
and make sure the coder didn't just stick a "19" on the front of the
(until yesterday) two digits that perl returned. 


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