Comment 3 for bug 1090290

It took me a white to undertand where the date problem was, but I think you're referring to this:

# Commands run in *one* big line so that date discrepancies are minimized

   cd <some safe dir>

  rm -f *.zoo *.bak *.txt; \
  touch -d "2000-02-01 01:01:00" 1-oldest.txt; \
  touch -d "2000-03-01 01:01:00" 2-newest.txt; \
  date +"# now: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"; \
  zoo -add archive.zoo *.txt > /dev/null ; \
  ls -la | grep -Ev 'total| [.]' ; \
  zoo -list *.zoo

# now: 2013-05-28 10:25:22
-rw-r--r-- 1 user src 0 2000-02-01 01:01 1-oldest.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 user src 0 2000-03-01 01:01 2-newest.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 user src 240 2000-02-29 00:01 archive.zoo

Archive archive.zoo:
Length CF Size Now Date Time
-------- --- -------- --------- --------
       0 0% 0 1 Feb 00 01:01:00+64 0000 1-oldest.txt
       0 0% 0 1 Mar 00 01:01:00+64 0000 2-newest.txt
-------- --- -------- --------- --------
       0 0% 0 2 files

NOTES

The date of the *.zoo archive is not the current date it was created, but taken somehow from the date of the file that was added to it.

This looks characteristics to zoo; This also happens with options -update and -freshen.