wxDateTime::Now() off by 10 hours

chris · Post by **chris** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:18 pm

Hi all,

I'm experiencing a strange problem with wxDateTime::Now(). I'm logging some stuff to a wxTextCtrl via

textctrl->AppendText(wxDateTime::Now().Format(_T("%x %X: ")+somestring);

Now to the problem: The first call to wxDateTime::Now().Format(...) is off by -10 hours; all subsequent calls display the correct time. Example:

04/11/06 08:16:03: foo
04/11/06 18:16:03: foo
04/11/06 18:16:03: foo

If I call wxDateTime::Now() once before the first wxDateTime::Now().Format(...) call it works as it should.

I'm in GMT+1 with DST, btw.

Any ideas?

Chris

Post by **protocol** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 10:12 pm

Is your locale setup correctly on your machine?

chris · Post by **chris** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:13 am

Hi protocol,

Yes, it is.
I should have mentioned this happens under wxMSW 2.6.3 (and 2.6.2), but works fine under wxGTK 2.6.3.
The strange thing is that it's off just for the very first call and then works as expected. With a badly set up locale I'd assume a permanent shift.

Chris

Phoenix_pl · Post by **Phoenix_pl** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:02 am

I had the same problem. This should help you:

Code: Select all

wxDateTime now = wxDateTime::Now();
textctrl->AppendText(now.Format(_T("%x %X: ")+somestring);

It worked for me.

chris · Post by **chris** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:10 am

Hi Phoenix_pl,

It's good to know I'm not the only one having this problem. Are you using wxMSW, too?
I guess it's time to post a bug to the tracker...

Chris

edit: I'm sorry, but I fail to see why that should lead to a different behaviour. It's sematically identical to the call in my first post.

Phoenix_pl · Post by **Phoenix_pl** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:29 am

Yes, I'm using wxMSW.

And yes, it helps and I'm not sure why. Just try it. Also I have included some screenshots.

chris · Post by **chris** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 10:12 am

Whoa...you are right.

I don't understand this at all.

What's the big difference between

Code: Select all

wxDateTime now = wxDateTime::Now();
textctrl->AppendText(now.Format(_T("%x %X: ")+somestring);

and

Code: Select all

textctrl->AppendText(wxDateTime::Now().Format(_T("%x %X: ")+somestring);

except that one uses an anonymus variable and the other a named variable?

At first I thought this could be some wierd compiler/runtime library issue, but I see this both on Visual C++ 7.1 and MinGW 3.4.2.

Now() is an inlined method, could that have to do something with this? Though compiling with "-fno-inline" resp. "/Ob0" didn't make a change.

This is really strange. I'd like to understand this; any ideas?

Chris

eco · Post by **eco** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 7:14 pm

I tried tracing the differences between the two. I didn't see anything glaringly wrong but the path is slightly complicated to trace. wxDateTime uses the default copy constructor so I doubt the issue is there. The first main difference I would think would be that the first one creates a wxDateTime instance then Now() is called versus the latter which calls Now then creates the instance. I don't immediately see why this would be a problem. I looked into Format() and my first thought was it had something to do with GetTimeZone() in datetime.cpp but it doesn't appear to care whether a wxDateTime instances has been created, it has its own static member variable it uses to determine whether the time zone has been established yet so the ordering of Now() and construction doesn't appear to matter (if it is, indeed a problem with GetTimeZone()).

I'll ping Vadim on the mailing list (he wrote these classes) and see what he thinks.

chris · Post by **chris** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:32 pm

Hi eco,

I've been thinking of a copy ctor issue, too, but

Code: Select all

wxDateTime *now=&wxDateTime::Now();
textctrl->AppendText(now->Format(_T("%x %X: ")+somestring);

works as intended without calling a copy ctor, so it can't be related to that.

And thanks for looking into this and posting to wx-dev. I really want to know what's going on here.

Chris

eco · Post by **eco** » Thu Apr 13, 2006 9:38 pm

Vadim's reply:

I've just tried it here (VC7.1, HEAD) and it works as expected. I'm not in
UTC-9 of course, but I'm not in UTC neither... I have really no idea why it
doesn't work for two of you.

I suspect you may have to break out the debugger if you want to get to the bottom of the issue. I'm a bit overloaded here or else I'd give it an attempt.

Jamie · Post by **Jamie** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 3:18 am

Can you please download CVS HEAD and try again as I have committed a fix for this.

Thanks

chris · Post by **chris** » Fri Apr 14, 2006 2:52 pm

Hi Jamie,

Yes, this is fixed for me in HEAD by your changes in datetime.cpp.

Many thanks for your time!

Chris

Peterj · Post by **Peterj** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 11:29 am

Jamie,

While you were fixing this, did you also check out Today(). It also appears to be broken in 2.6.3 (alpha).

Code: Select all

wxDateTime defdate,tday;
tday = defdate.Today();
today = tday.FormatDate();// produces a date of 03/15/2006

today = tday.Format("%d/%m/%Y"); // produces correct date 15/04/2006

Regards,
Peter

Jamie · Post by **Jamie** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 12:53 am

Try using CVS HEAD as this should also be fixed.

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