Date.strptime and DateTime.strptime do not properly parse certain forms of input in which there are no non-numeric separators
between the fields.

For example, the following code fails:

Date.strptime("20060401", "%Y%m%d")
ArgumentError: 3 elements of civil date are necessary
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:650:in `new_with_hash'
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:675:in `strptime'
        from (irb):21
        from /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8/date.rb:1197

The following code, however, works as expected:

x = Date.strptime("2006 04 01", "%Y %m %d")
=> #<Date: 4907653/2,0,2299161>

Date: 2006-08-03 14:23
Sender: Tom Copeland

This has been answered by Matz here:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/8485

Yours,

Tom