Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!munnari.oz.au!basser!metro!ipso!runxtsa!sce
From: sce@runxtsa.runx.oz.au (Simon Evans)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: String2Time (in Script Manager) woes
Message-ID: <483@runxtsa.runx.oz.au>
Date: 11 Dec 89 05:46:12 GMT
Reply-To: sce@runx.oz (Simon Evans)
Organization: RUNX Unix Timeshare.  Sydney, Australia.
Lines: 35



I have been unable to get the Script Manager (v$020E -- 2.14 in System 6.0.2) 
to correctly parse the time and date "09:13 5/23/89", for example. The problem
is that String2Time dutifully follows the syntax given in the documentation,

	time	:= number [tSep number [tSep number]] [mornStr |
	        			 eveStr | timeSuff]
	tSep	:= timeSep | sep
	sep	:= <non-alphanumeric>

interprets the space as a separator, and swallows the 5 as the seconds 
field of the time. Then all that is left for String2Date is "/23/89"
which it understandably fails to make much sense of.
(String2Time will in fact parse "09:13 This is extraneous 54 trombones"
identically, adding extraneousStrings to the result code -- ie
it gives a time of 09:13:54).

The main question --

Is there any way to stop String2Time hunting for seconds, or do I have to
insist that users either include seconds or write the date as 
"5/23/89 09:13"?? Am I missing something really obvious??

If this isn't a bug in the Script Manager, it is at least very annoying.
If I have to code around this problem, the whole point of the Script Manager/
International Utilities is lost.

The routine is documented as being semantically driven, and smarter than
the pure syntax would indicate. Perhaps it should be smart enough to deal
with this a little better??


Simon Evans. 
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