[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #62078: Crash: Settings>General Config Timezone and Custom Date Format crashes on save

[WordPress Trac]

#62078: Crash: Settings>General Config Timezone and Custom Date Format crashes on
save
----------------------------+-----------------------------
 Reporter:  vanlyle         |      Owner:  (none)
     Type:  defect (bug)    |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Date/Time       |    Version:  6.6.2
 Severity:  normal          |   Keywords:
  Focuses:  administration  |
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 After installing WP 6.6.2 I went to Settings>General and changed the
 Timezone to Vancouver and created a custom date format of jM'y (which
 shows a preview as 08sep'24 ) When I saved the configuation I get the
 "Internal Error" crash message.

 After that point installing, activating or deleting plug-ins can and do
 fail.

 I stumbled upon this bug over a year ago but didn't realize this was the
 cause at the time. We had a lot of problems with our WP site during that
 period and wasted a lot of time trying to fix issues. Trying to restore
 from backups using UpdraftPlus would fail with the message: PHP Fatal
 error (TypeError) has occurred during restore_alldownloaded subaction.
 Error Message: Unsupported operand types: string * int (Code: 0, line 76
 in /var/www/html/op-includes/functions.php
 When I looked at that code location I could see it was related to dates
 and/or timezones and that's what clued me into the possible cause.

 Working with a fresh install of WP 6.6.2 and I was able to reproduce the
 bug multiple times.

 It's the **combination of setting both the TZ and date format at the same
 time and then saving** the configuration that causes the crash. If you set
 the TZ and save the configuration and then set the custom date format and
 save the configuration there's no problem.

 Just in case the apostrophe ' in the date format was causing the problem I
 escaped it as in jM\'y. But made no difference - still crashed.

 This is running on Ubuntu with Apache, PHP 8.0.30, MySQL 8.0.30

 I searched for previous tickets reporting this particular issue but
 couldn't find one.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/62078>
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