Re: Full Julian date in date command formatting options?

[Eric Blake]

On 10/11/2013 01:18 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 10/11/2013 11:56 AM, Reed Underwood wrote:
>> I wonder if it would be alright to implement a
>> full Julian date in the date command's format options
>> (maybe a %J?). It could be really useful in shell
>> scripts, etc.
> 
> Can you give an example of what you mean be a full Julian date?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_day suggests:

For example, The Julian Date for 00:30:00.0 January 1, 2013 is
2456293.520833.

If the astronomical term is what you want, then maybe you really do have
a format that cannot be expressed in any existing notation, and maybe it
really is worth burning a % notation.  But how common is the
Astronomical Julian Date in shell programming?

On the other hand, that wikipedia page also suggests:

Outside of an astronomical or historical context, if a given "Julian
date" is "40", this most likely means the fortieth day of a given
Gregorian year, namely February 9.

and _that_ description sounds like what 'date +%j' already gives you.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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