[PHP-NOTES] note 130618 added to function.date

[email protected] ("Anonymous") Wed, 21 Jan 2026 07:52:19 +0000
Newsgroups php.notes
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Be careful as this innocent piece of code

<?php
echo date('d.m.Y', null);
?>

outputs a different date on PHP 8 vs. earlier.

In PHP 8 `null` is treated as `null` and will make `date()` use its default value.

While on earlier PHP versions `null` will be cast to `0` therefore outputing `01.01.1970` (Unix Epoc)
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Manual Page -- https://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php
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