From: Peter Krantz <peter.krantz@...>
Date: 2006-08-21T06:07:33+09:00
Subject: Time.parse of empty string returns Time.now?

Hi!

I am Ruby newbie and have a question regarding Time.parse(). I am
using Time.parse to scan arbitrary strings for a datetime value. When
I feed strings that have no datetime value in them Time.parse seems to
return Time.now.

How can I check if my string has a datetime value in it? I would
rather have Time.parse return nil if there wasn't any value in the
string. Right now it seems like I am unable to tell if there was a
datetime fragment in the string or not. There is no way to say if the
string contained a datetime value == now or if it was empty.

Example:

> reactor_shutdown = Time.parse("Never")
=> Sun Aug 20 23:05:33 CEST 2006

Regards,

Peter