Re: Full Julian date in date command formatting options?

[Reed Underwood]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 04:44:09PM -0600, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 10/11/2013 04:18 PM, Erik Auerswald wrote:
> > I'd say that 'date' is the natural program to try for date
> > manipulations. ;-)
> > 
> > GNU systems are very useful in scientific settings, IMHO adding full
> > Julian date in the astronomical sense to 'date' further enhances this.
> 
> Hmm, the aspect of date conversion is interesting.  In particular:
> 
> We already have bi-directional conversion between common and Epoch dates
> ('date +%s.%N' to convert to seconds since Epoch, and 'date -d @...' to
> convert Epoch back to common).  So if we do add a conversion to Julian
> date output, we should also add a -d shorthand for conversion from
> Julian on input.
> 
> -- 
> Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
> Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
>

Wow. That's really interesting. I can see that sort of conversion
coming in handy for astronomical/scientific applications. Would it
require settling on some prefix to denote Julian date values?

Forgive me if I ask dumb questions. I've not had a chance to really
dig into all that 'date' does, much less the libraries upon which
it relies.

-R.