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chage -E, usermod -e: dates other than YYYY-MM-DD are rejected

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
62/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start in shadow-core/src/date.rs and inspect how chage -E, usermod -e, and useradd -e parse expiration dates. Compare the current parser with the GNU date forms listed in the issue and check how uutils/parse_datetime handles them. Done means those commands accept the listed forms while preserving the existing day-count behavior and matching GNU's results.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

chage -E and usermod -e (and useradd -e) accept only YYYY-MM-DD or a day count. GNU 4.17.4 reads the date with its general date parser, so other common forms work:

# chage -E 01/02/2030 alice
GNU:  exit 0, expire = 21916 (2030-01-02)
here: invalid date '01/02/2030' (expected YYYY-MM-DD or days since epoch), exit 2

Same for 2030/01/02, 1/2/30, 2 Jan 2030, January 2, 2030 and tomorrow, which GNU all takes; usermod -e 01/02/2030 exits 3 here. Scripts written for GNU that pass a date in one of these forms stop working.

The parsing is in shadow-core/src/date.rs. uutils/parse_datetime already reads the GNU date -d forms; would using it there be welcome? I can send a PR.

Checked on main 7a84527 in ubuntu:26.04 (GNU passwd 1:4.17.4-2ubuntu3).

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
17
Forks
10
Avg merge
18h 30m
Merged PRs (30d)
24

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