[Rd] as.Date() , feature or bug?

[Bo Peng]

This problem was brought up by Xu Neng <neng.xu at umontreal.ca> in the rpy-list. 

<Quote>
Remember the old times when computer guys thought the year 2000 was
too far away to be worried? In my case, the dates like "6666-06-6" and
"9999-09-09" are used as special missing codings for dates.

If R cannot handle dates later than the year 5000, it is fine. Please
just let the world knows about it. What is really annoying is the fact
that the default date "1970-01-01" is silently used instead of raising
exception. If you are not very careful, you may not even notice this
trick. This is the bug I'm referring to.

Hopefully, the R experts can handle this bug seriously.
</Quote>

Bo