Date doesn't like field separators

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

On 2013-09-25 15:49, Jody Lee Bruchon wrote:
> I am using the date command to process dates from a text file in the typical American "mm/dd/yyyy" format. The date command chokes if I pass such a date with -d for reformatting; likewise, dashes aren't accepted at all either. I am having to pipe through tr -d / before giving the date, but GNU coreutils 8.19 gladly accepts the same date with separators. I'm confused by the code for date.c and I'm not quite sure what to change to add compatibility, so I thought I should at least mention it here. It may even be a bug in the code, since I see at least one strspn call with 0123456789 as permissible characters.
>
> While my script works with the tr command plugged in, it's a minor incompatibility that I had to handle when moving a script from its GNU testing machine, and I imagine I can't be the only one hit by it.

GNU coreutils' "date" command accepts a pretty astounding range of date-formats :)

Have you checked the output of busybox's "date --help"? The copy of busybox that 
I have on hand says:

	Recognized TIME formats:
		hh:mm[:ss]
		[YYYY.]MM.DD-hh:mm[:ss]
		YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm[:ss]
		[[[[[YY]YY]MM]DD]hh]mm[.ss]
		'date TIME' form accepts MMDDhhmm[[YY]YY][.ss] instead

Also, it mentions a "-D FMT" option, which, if the strings you have are in 
"mm/dd/yyyy HH:MM:SS" format..., you should be able to make the date command 
parse them with:

	date -D '%m/%d/%Y %T' --date=...

Though it looks like "-D" is a nonstandard option--my copy of GNU date doesn't 
have it....


-- 
"'tis an ill wind that blows no minds."