期望Time.zone.parse引发带有无效日期的错误，但返回nil

Question

Why doesn't Time.zone.parse('invalid') raise an error while Time.parse('invalid') does ?

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Example using Rails 4.2.7.1

>> Time.zone.parse('invalid')
nil

>> Time.parse('invalid')
ArgumentError: no time information in "invalid"
    from D:/softwares/ruby/Ruby22/lib/ruby/2.2.0/time.rb:252:in `make_time'
    from D:/softwares/ruby/Ruby22/lib/ruby/2.2.0/time.rb:364:in `parse'

Answer 1

Both methods call Date._parse which return {} if no date could be extracted.

Time.zone.parse stops there and returns if the result is empty. Time.parse makes a call to make_time which throws an error if no date could be generated.