Incorrect date format in en_CA.utf8 locale

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

Hello. Yes, I tried this in Ubuntu 8.04, and the result is the same.

Here's the web page from the National Research Council of Canada citing ISO 8601 as the standard date/time format in Canada, by the way: http://inms-ienm.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/faq_time_e.html#Q8.

Forwarded upstream. This should be ack'ed by upstream first, so that we don't unnecessarily deviate from other distros, and other distributions benfit from the fixes as well.

Patch created and sent upstream.

This bug was fixed in the package langpack-locales - 2.9+cvs20090214-5

---------------
langpack-locales (2.9+cvs20090214-5) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Add debian/local/txt2unicode.py: Script to convert an unicode
    string into the <Uxxxx> format used in locale definitions.
  * Add mt_MT-Awwissu-spelling.patch: Fix Maltese spelling of *
    "Awwissu" (August). (LP: #262133)
  * Add en_CA-dateformat.patch: en_CA date format should be "%y-%m-%d"
    (see http://inms-ienm.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/faq_time_e.html#Q8).
    (LP: #214730)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:29:59 +0100

The correct date format should be %Y-%m-%d. %y-%m-%d gives a two digit year, when ISO8601 specifies a four digit year.

On 2014-09-09 17:51, danno_mac wrote:
> The correct date format should be %Y-%m-%d.

And it is in Ubuntu since several years, and this bug report is closed.

$ LANG=en_CA.UTF-8 locale d_fmt
%Y-%m-%d

I realise the bug report is closed, but what got put in is not %Y-%m-%d. It is %y-%m-%d.

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS"
$ LANG=en_CA.UTF-8 locale d_fmt
%y-%m-%d
$ LANG=fr_CA.UTF-8 locale d_fmt
%Y-%m-%d

Should I open a new bug?

Sorry, my mistake. I have LC_TIME set explicitly (to the Swedish locale), so I should have done:

$ LC_TIME=en_CA.UTF-8 locale d_fmt
%y-%m-%d

which proves you are right.

Normally you should file a new bug, but it appears to me that they made a mistake 5 years ago, so let's say this is a correction of that fix. ;)

Reopening.

This bug was fixed in the package langpack-locales - 2.13+git20120306-14

---------------
langpack-locales (2.13+git20120306-14) utopic; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/ubuntu-en_CA-dateformat.patch:
    Change d_fmt from 2-digit to 4-digit year (LP: #214730).
 -- Gunnar Hjalmarsson <email address hidden> Wed, 10 Sep 2014 01:12:00 +0200

Several years later, the en_CA package still shows date as %d/%m/%y

$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS"

$ LANG=en_CA.UTF-8 locale d_fmt
%d/%m/%y

Was there a regression?

On 2020-10-19 17:32, Jean-Sebastien Dominique wrote:
> Several years later, the en_CA package still shows date as %d/%m/%y

No it doesn't.

$ LC_TIME=en_CA.UTF-8 locale d_fmt
%Y-%m-%d

Hmm, you are indeed correct. For some reason, my LC_TIME is set to en_GB and I have no idea why. Everything else is set to en_CA. Sorry about that. I recently updated to KDE Plasma 5 and I'm having so many issues with locale ever since. Sorry again!

KDE does have issues with locale settings, unfortunately. Have had for several years now.

Maybe try https://askubuntu.com if you don't figure it out yourself.

Thanks. I did fix it. The only thing left is the 12-hour time, but that's sadly in the locale (%r). It should really be 24-hour time, which is what we mostly use in Canada (and the official time is in 24-hour format), despite 12-hour time being tolerated. At least KDE lets me force that to 24-hour time, so I'm set on that end.

There is an upstream bug where the time format aspect is still open:

https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16668

Please feel free to add a comment to speed it up. :)