Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Leap year birthday bug fix offered

news
Feb 22, 20081 min

The Honor Society of Leap Year Babies, which describes itself as the world’s largest Internet birthday club, has released free software to correct the “invalid birth date” bug that can impact those born on February 29.

Persons born on that date, which only shows up on the calendar once every four years, can encounter this bug whenever they enter their birth date on a Web site registration screen, the Honor Society said. The software also can be used in automated birth date response systems that usually ignore people born on February 29, according to the society.

“I think the main [impact of the software] will be that when we get a birthday, it will sort of be treated like everybody else’s birthday,” said Peter Brouwer, a society representative who was himself born on February 29. He wrote the software as a six-line Perl program.

Intended for Web designers, the software determines if any year is a leap year and can be used for birth date verification. The code is posted on the organization’s Web site. The society was formed in 1997 and has more than 6,000 members worldwide.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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