Re: BUG #17794: dates with zero or negative years are not accepted

David Rowley <dgrowleyml(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> From an implementation point of view, it looks trivial to just allow
> 0000 to mean 1 BC, however, the situation is more complex for negative
> numbers as ParseDateTime() sees the negative sign and categorises that
> portion as a timezone. The parsing would have to be adjusted to make
> this be seen as a year, and that'll cause us to suddenly start
> interpreting date strings differently from what we do now, which risks
> breaking applications. I'm not sure that's worth the risk.

Yeah, the real problem is that getting '-' to be seen as part of the
year field will cause havoc in the parsing rules. I'd say if you
want this sort of input, use make_date() or make_timestamptz() rather
than going through string form.

regards, tom lane