time.String produces garbage out for time.Parse (garbage in)

[Yndoendo]

time.String() produces non-standard output that time.Parse cannot handle. This goes against less is more since either a person needs to write a custom parser or change the output format which both increases the code base.

If marked as not a bug nor not fixing, documentation for time package should be updated to inform that that time.String output is incompatible with time.Parse.

What version of Go are you using (go version)?

go1.7.1 linux/amd64

What operating system and processor architecture are you using (go env)?

GOARCH="amd64"
GOBIN=""
GOEXE=""
GOHOSTARCH="amd64"
GOHOSTOS="linux"
GOOS="linux"
GOPATH="$HOME/.local/share/go"
GORACE=""
GOROOT="/usr/lib/go"
GOTOOLDIR="/usr/lib/go/pkg/tool/linux_amd64"
CC="gcc"
GOGCCFLAGS="-fPIC -m64 -pthread -fmessage-length=0 -fdebug-prefix-map=/tmp/go-build766838131=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches"
CXX="g++"
CGO_ENABLED="1"

What did you do?

https://play.golang.org/p/wmfQP5wX0S

func main() {
    t := time.Now().UTC()
    s := t.String()

    t, err := time.Parse(s,s)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Println(s, "parsed with error", err)
    } else {
        fmt.Println(s, "equals", t.String())
    }
}

[freeformz]

The first value to time.Parse is the layout. time.String's docs indicate what the layout is. So this works.

If anything it would be nice to export that layout as a constant instead of embedding the string directly in time.String().

[bradfitz]

You already filed this bug in #17253. What @freeformz is correct. You're just not using the time package correctly.

I recommend https://golang.org/wiki/Questions for questions about learning Go.

[Yndoendo]

Sorry, didn't know layout had to be certain date and time, looked only to be just the format.