From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jul 31 20:04:31 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA20646 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 31 Jul 1997 20:04:31 -0700 (PDT) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA20641 for ; Thu, 31 Jul 1997 20:04:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from msmith@localhost) by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.8.5/8.7.3) id MAA02188; Fri, 1 Aug 1997 12:34:00 +0930 (CST) From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199708010304.MAA02188@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: date(1) In-Reply-To: <199708010208.LAA08172@freebie.lemis.com> from Greg Lehey at "Aug 1, 97 11:38:39 am" To: grog@lemis.com (Greg Lehey) Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 12:33:59 +0930 (CST) Cc: brian@awfulhak.org, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Greg Lehey stands accused of saying: > > Most newcomers to UNIX hate date(1) because the date entry format is > already too cryptic. This would just make it worse. There are some > other alternatives for date entry--tar uses one, for example, though > it may be GNU code. Why not base an implementation on one of those? This is what I proposed back at the beginning of the thread : something like : date -f %H:%M:%S 12:31:00 date -f %c%y,%m,%d 1997,Aug,1 etc, with some standard builtin templates for trying, eg : date -a "Fri 1 Aug 12:33:15 CST 1997" is the standard ctime format, one that's worth parsing. > Greg -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[