Fixed Help nits

[Steve Fabian]

Topic Date Ranges paragraph 3 has incorrect example (V12 example incorrectly "updated"):

For example, /[d2010-12-31,2010-1-1] selects files modified between December 31, 2010 and January 1, 2011.

The 3rd paragraph below the table of examples (none of which show a "date exclusion range"!) refers to the date 1980-01-01 as the oldest PC file date - only true for FAT file systems. The actual example is correct, but the reference to the "zero point" etc. is not. With NTFS if I copy a document from the Civil War I can set its modification date to the document's actual date. Useful for a document archivist!

Note: There ought to be a prefix for HELP nits!

 

[rconn]

The 3rd paragraph below the table of examples (none of which show a "date exclusion range"!) refers to the date 1980-01-01 as the oldest PC file date - only true for FAT file systems. The actual example is correct, but the reference to the "zero point" etc. is not. With NTFS if I copy a document from the Civil War I can set its modification date to the document's actual date. Useful for a document archivist!

You could, but you wouldn't. In the real world, nobody is going to have file dates prior to the existence of the PC.

 

[thedave]

You could, but you wouldn't. In the real world, nobody is going to have file dates prior to the existence of the PC.

I checked my system and I found a few hundred files that predate 1980 (and not dates I intentionally set myself, all came this way in some fashion, likely from archives)

I was a bit surprised, I expected 2-3 (because I already knew about them)

 

[Steve Fabian]

The incorrect statements in HELP, reported in the OP, are still present in the webhelp as well as the one distributed with build 56. IMHO the issue is NOT FIXED. As specified in the 4th paragraph of the topic, the date range /[d2010-12-31,2010-1-1] is the same as /[d2010-1-1,2010-12-31], i.e., files dated at any time in the 2010th year, NOT those dated the last day of 2010 or the day after that, the first day of 2011. BTW, is there any reason to change the dates used in the date range EXAMPLES just because they are not "current"? The examples would be valid if they referred to the year 1910 - why else use a time stamp system going back several centuries! Of course, examples using 2-digit year always refer to the closed interval [1980,2079].

 

[rconn]

The incorrect statements in HELP, reported in the OP, are still present in the webhelp as well as the one distributed with build 56.

You posted them after build 56 was completed. They are in build 57.

 

[Steve Fabian]

Sorry, b56 was distributed later than the "fixed" prefix. Perhaps you could add in future a note in which version it is fixed. It certainly was not a show stopper that would require "instant" response.

 

[rconn]

Build 56 was built hours before you posted. Your nit was not deemed sufficiently earthshaking to warrant spending 4 hours rebuilding everything.

(The web help *was* updated with the change, but the tcmd.chm help update won't appear until 13.04.57.)

 

[mfarah]

You could, but you wouldn't. In the real world, nobody is going to have file dates prior to the existence of the PC.

Years ago, I had to help a professor migrate his personal files (mostly plaintext files) written in a VMS machine that was (even then) old as sin. Some of his files were, indeed, older than 1980.

Sure, 1980 might be enough for all practical purposes, but a small note might be helpful. You could add an asterisk after the '1980', and later on add something like this:

In the FAT filesystem, originally used on the IBM PC and still extant, 01-01-1980 is the oldest date that can be handled; this is why, for most practical purposes, this is considered the oldest PC file date. Other, newer, filesystems can handle dates farther into the past.