Re: bug in date --date="... sec"

[Bob Proulx]

Enke, Michael <address@hidden> [2002-09-23 11:14:48 +0200]:
> I guess I found a bug in date when converting seconds to readable date.

What version of date are you using?

  date --version

If you are using an old date command then it is certainly likely.
Here is a snippet from an FAQ.

    
http://www.gnu.org/software/fileutils/doc/faq/#The%20date%20command%20is%20not%20working%20right.

    If you are using date version 2.0 or earlier that is certainly
    possible. A large number of bug fixes and improvements went into the
    sh-utils-2.0.11 around October 2000. Please install a newer version
    of the code.

> I perform the following command:
> 
> address@hidden:~ > date && date +%s
> Mon Sep 23 11:04:44 CEST 2002
> 1032771884
> 
> So 1032771884 is the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
> 
> Now I want to convert back from seconds to readable date:
> 
> address@hidden:~ > date --date="1970-01-01 1032771884 sec"
> Mon Sep 23 10:04:44 CEST 2002
> 
> The output should show: 11:04:44 and not 10:04:44 since seconds
> are always from 00:00:00 UTC
> 
> If I call:
> 
> address@hidden:~ > date --date="1970-01-01 1032771884 sec UTC"
> Mon Sep 23 12:04:44 CEST 2002
> 
> I also don't get 11:04:44

This works for me using 2.0.11.  I am in the MDT timezone so I
overrode it with your CEST timezone.

  TZ=CEST date
  Tue Sep 24 00:59:06 CEST 2002
  TZ=CEST date +%s
  1032829149
  TZ=CEST date -d '1970-01-01 UTC 1032829149 sec'
  Tue Sep 24 00:59:09 CEST 2002

Hope that helps.

Bob