<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Did you mean to say that converting any given time to epoch is > invalid for time stamp purposes, or that the date/time format > provided to the "-d" option in this particular example is an > invalid time stamp?
A bit of both. > Typically the reason for converting to epoch (or julian for that > matter) is to allow for easy machine comparison and sorting of > date/time stamps. In such case, if the data contains date/time > stamps from multiple timezones, one must be able to convert to > epoch relative to one's local timezone otherwise proper sorting can > not be achieved. Sure, but if the data contains _alphabetic_ time zone abbreviations from multiple sources, then the user is in trouble. There is no standard for alphabetic time zone abbreviations. "EST" means one thing in the U.S. and a different thing in (actually, _two_ different things) in Australia. "date" cannot reasonably be expected to support alphabetic time zone abbreviations in general. If they work, great; but there are no guarantees. > I can assure you that > this error occurs regardless of the time stamp format > used/provided. No, it works just fine with numeric time stamps, where there is no ambiguity. For example: $ date -d "Tue Jan 14 08:25:26 PDT 2008" +%s date: invalid date `Tue Jan 14 08:25:26 PDT 2008' $ date -d "Tue Jan 14 08:25:26 -0700 2008" +%s 1200324326 $ echo $TZ America/Los_Angeles _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
