Weird IE6 Date Comparison bug

[guilhermelemmi]

I'm creating a function that will take a start date, a period duration (in months)and a maximum date, and will calculate the periods start and end dates until reaching the maximum date.
For instance, I would give 01/01/2008, period equals 3 months and maximum date equals 01/01/2009, and the method should return periods like "01/01/2008-03/31/2008","04/01/2008-06/30/2008","07/01/2008-09/30/2008","10/01/2008-12/31/2008".

The code looks like:
[CODE=javascript]function getPeriods(p_st artDate, p_duration, p_maxDate)
{
var periodsList = [];
var nextStartDate, endDate, period, year, month, day;
var startDt = p_startDate;
do {
year = startDt.getUTCF ullYear();
month = startDt.getUTCM onth();
day = startDt.getUTCD ate();

nextStartDate = new Date();
nextStartDate.s etFullYear(year , month + p_duration, day);

endDate = new Date(nextStartD ate);
endDate.setDate (endDate.getDat e()-1);

if(endDate >= p_maxDate) {
endDate = p_maxDate;
}
period = {"Start":startD t,"End":endDate };
periodsList[periodsList.len gth] = period;
startDt = nextStartDate;
//alert(periodsLi st.length);
}
while(p_maxDate > endDate);

return periodsList;
}

function printPeriods(p_ periodsList)
{
alert(">>>" + p_periodsList.l ength);
//for(var i=0; i< p_periodsList.l ength ; i++)
//{
//alert("Start: " + p_periodsList[i].Start + "\nEnd: " + p_periodsList[i].End);
//}
}

var st = new Date;
st.setFullYear( 2008,0,1);
var max = new Date;
max.setFullYear (2009,0,1);
max.setDate(max .getDate()-1);
printPeriods(ge tPeriods(st, 3, max));[/CODE]


However, when I run the code, the alert window will display ">>> 5" in IE6, while it displays ">>> 4" in Firefox, which is the expected length.

To make things even stranger, if I uncomment the "alert" in the last line of the "do" block, IE will run the correct number of loops, displaying ">>> 4" in the end.

Any ideas or workarounds?

Thanks in advance!

[acoder]

Weird indeed. This also occurs in IE7. Since it works with the alert, there must be some timing bug. It may work if you use a small timeout.