Re: to_date gives odd results

Robert Treat <xzilla(at)users(dot)sourceforge(dot)net> writes:
> pagila=# select to_date('05 December 2000', 'DD Month YYYY');
> to_date
> ---------------
> 0001-12-05 BC
> (1 row)

> I can't imagine that's expected behavior.... bug?

You needed to say FMMonth, else it expects fixed-width column.

to_date and friends are fairly awful in terms of not throwing errors
when the input doesn't really match the format. I think what you
shoulda got here is a bad-input error. However, somebody's going to
have to do a major rewrite of formatting.c to make it much better...

(Hmmm ... actually, in CVS HEAD this produces 2000-12-05 with or without
FM, which looks like a rather ill-considered change to try to make
things work "nicely". The problem that it goes south on actually bad
input is still there.)

regards, tom lane