Bug #15160: ArgumentError: year too big to marshal

• Status: Closed
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -
• Backport: 2.3: UNKNOWN, 2.4: UNKNOWN, 2.5: UNKNOWN

[Dirk (Dirk Meier-Eickhoff)]

I encountered the problem, that marshaling a Time object does not always work.

Try run following commands in irb that will raise an error:

Marshal.dump(Time.new(1900))
#Traceback (most recent call last):
#        3: from (irb):35
#        2: from (irb):35:in `dump'
#        1: from (irb):35:in `_dump'
#ArgumentError (year too big to marshal: 1899 UTC)

Marshal.dump(Time.new(1899))
#Traceback (most recent call last):
#        3: from (irb):37
#        2: from (irb):37:in `dump'
#        1: from (irb):37:in `_dump'
#ArgumentError (year too big to marshal: 1898 UTC)

Following commands will work fine:

Marshal.dump(Time.new(1901))
# => "\x04\bIu:\tTime\r\xF7/\x00\x80\x00\x00\x00\x00\a:\voffseti\x02\x10\x0E:\tzoneI\"\bCET\x06:\x06EF"

Marshal.dump(Date.new(1899))
# => "\x04\bU:\tDate[\vi\x00i\x03@\xD8$i\x00i\x00i\x00f\f2299161"

I'm in timezone CEST (UTC+2).

I tested it at MacOS High Sierra (10.13.6 (17G65)) and Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.4.0-135-generic x86_64) with two Ruby versions:

• ruby 2.5.1p57 (2018-03-29 revision 63029) [x86_64-darwin17]
• ruby 2.6.0preview2 (2018-05-31 trunk 63539) [x86_64-darwin17]

I expect that all Time objects can be marshaled, even if they are prior 1900.

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

• Tracker changed from Bug to Feature
• ruby -v deleted (ruby 2.6.0preview2 (2018-05-31 trunk 63539) [x86_64-darwin17])
• Backport deleted (2.3: UNKNOWN, 2.4: UNKNOWN, 2.5: UNKNOWN)

This is a limit of current marshal format of Time, not a bug.

This is a patch to extend the limit, but it has a little problem on marshal data compatibility.

$ ./ruby -e 'Marshal.dump(Time.new(1900), STDOUT)'|ruby -e 'p Marshal.load(STDIN)'
67436-01-01 00:00:00 +0900

Dumped out-of-range Time with this patch will be loaded as the distant future, when loaded in old ruby.

[Dirk (Dirk Meier-Eickhoff)]

• Tracker changed from Feature to Bug
• Backport set to 2.3: UNKNOWN, 2.4: UNKNOWN, 2.5: UNKNOWN

[nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada)]

• Status changed from Open to Closed

Applied in changeset git|e690df1f1ef4f791295448f9192d6e027400ee72.

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Marshal distant past/future

[Feature #15160]