time: time.Parse() doesn't accept 2-char day abbreviations (bsd date output)

[TLINDEN]

Go version

1.23.5

Output of go env in your module/workspace:

GO111MODULE=''
GOARCH='amd64'
GOBIN=''
GOCACHE='/home/scip/.cache/go-build'
GOENV='/home/scip/.config/go/env'
GOEXE=''
GOEXPERIMENT=''
GOFLAGS=''
GOHOSTARCH='amd64'
GOHOSTOS='linux'
GOINSECURE=''
GOMODCACHE='/home/scip/go/pkg/mod'
GONOPROXY=''
GONOSUMDB=''
GOOS='linux'
GOPATH='/home/scip/go'
GOPRIVATE=''
GOPROXY='https://proxy.golang.org,direct'
GOROOT='/usr/local/go'
GOSUMDB='sum.golang.org'
GOTMPDIR=''
GOTOOLCHAIN='auto'
GOTOOLDIR='/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64'
GOVCS=''
GOVERSION='go1.23.5'
GODEBUG=''
GOTELEMETRY='off'
GOTELEMETRYDIR='/home/scip/.config/go/telemetry'
GCCGO='gccgo'
GOAMD64='v1'
AR='ar'
CC='gcc'
CXX='g++'
CGO_ENABLED='1'
GOMOD='/home/scip/tmp/dateparse/go.mod'
GOWORK=''
CGO_CFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_CPPFLAGS=''
CGO_CXXFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_FFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_LDFLAGS='-O2 -g'
PKG_CONFIG='pkg-config'
GOGCCFLAGS='-fPIC -m64 -pthread -Wl,--no-gc-sections -fmessage-length=0 -ffile-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build2370889587=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches'

What did you do?

I wanted to parse FreeBSD's date(1) command output via ssh (I do not get this kind of output when logged in), which looks like this:

% ssh $some-freebsd-box date
Di. 23 Sep. 2025 23:39:13 CEST

I tried this code to parse it:

ts, err = time.Parse("Mo. 02 Jan. 2006 15:04:05 MST", timestamp)
if err != nil {
    log.Fatal(err)
}

What did you see happen?

This is the error I received:

parsing time "Di. 23 Sep. 2025 23:15:11 CEST" as "Mo. 02 Jan. 2006 15:04:05 MST": cannot parse "Di. 23 Sep. 2025 23:15:11 CEST" as "Mo. "

What did you expect to see?

I expected to retrieve a time.Time object.

[gabyhelp]

Related Issues

• time: Parse does not cover all valid RFC1123Z dates #34459 (closed)
• time: time zone parsing when format includes time zone seconds fails #68263 (closed)
• time.Parse doesn't seem to parse the abbreviated timezone as expected #56528 (closed)
• time: pre-defined layout cannot be parsed #45081 (closed)
• time.Parse fails at parsing time.String #17253 (closed)
• time: Parse is incorrect on some platforms #18373 (closed)
• time: Parse does not detect bad days ("00" -> returns wrong date && err=nil) #17874 (closed)
• affected/package: time #58217 (closed)
• time: time ParseInLocation error #66987 (closed)
• time: time.ParseInLocation can get the seconds wrong #71444 (closed)

_{(Emoji vote if this was helpful or unhelpful; more detailed feedback welcome in this discussion.)}

[ianlancetaylor]

Unfortunately that is just the start of your problems, as the time package does not support international names for weekdays. It only recognizes the literal strings "Sun", "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat". We aren't going to make the standard library time package international, so I'm going to close this issue. You will need to use some other approach. Sorry.

[TLINDEN]

Ok, I see. Thanks a lot for your fast response anyway!