date formats acceptable to the "date" command

[David Collier]

In article <memo.20110114113746.14188A at postmaster+dexdyne.com.cix.co.uk>,
from_busybox_maillist at dexdyne.com (David Collier) wrote:

> *From:* "David Collier" <from_busybox_maillist at dexdyne.com>
> *To:* busybox at busybox.net
> *CC:* jered at dexdyne.com
> *Date:* Fri, 14 Jan 2011 11:37 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
> 
> "big linux" date command seems to like a single format when you are
> setting the date
> 
> that is [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
> 
> if I do "date --help" in busybox it 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]
> 
> which doesn't seem to allow for MMDDhhmmCCYY
> 
> however when I experiment with
> 
>    date 011410032011
> 
>    it all seems to work as desired.

rubbish - I screwed my tests

it worked          in 1.13.1, 
     though it wasn't documented as an acceptable format
it no longer works in 1.17.4

So I guess the help file is now telling the truth.

It seems a bit silly not to accept the only standard format as used by
the coreutils version?

D





>    
> I think it's good that busybox should support the standard string 
> format -
> if you agree can it be added to the help info?
> 
> D
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