On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 02:09:29PM -0800, Paul Eggert wrote: > On 12/15/21 12:39, Mike Marchywka wrote: > > $echo 2000 | date +%Y -f- > > 2021 > > How about this instead? The idea is to avoid > adding features if they can easily be > implemented with some other standard utility. > This way, you can write your shell scripts now > rather than waiting for a future fix (plus, it > keeps 'date' simpler). > > echo 2000 | sed 's/$/-07-01/' | date +%Y -f- >
That is great until the input format is YYYY-MM-DD :) The point of using date was to get all the internal stuff that deals with ambiguous formats and probably a lot of other people do that too. The info documentation does point out how ambiguous the human readable dates are. I guess 2000 could also be ms since epoch. I am calling date from c++ and could just ias easily wrap it in another c++ program to deal with this but thought it was of more general interest and I did not want to make another kluge. Generally I agree with your approach but if date is going to be a swiss army knife for date conversions it makes some sense to allow user selection of ambiguity resolution doesn't it? Thanks. -- mike marchywka 306 charles cox canton GA 30115 USA, Earth marchy...@hotmail.com 404-788-1216 ORCID: 0000-0001-9237-455X
