date formats acceptable to the "date" command

[walter harms]

Am 15.01.2011 19:24, schrieb Denys Vlasenko:
> On Friday 14 January 2011 13:47, David Collier wrote:
>> 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?
> 
> There seems to be no consensus between Unix-like systems on this:
> 
> 
> http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/darwin/reference/manpages/man1/date.1.html
> DATE(1)                                  BSD General Commands Manual                                 DATE(1)
> SYNOPSIS
>      date [-jnu] [[[mm]dd]HH]MM[[cc]yy][.ss]
> 
> http://www.daemon-systems.org/man/date.1.html
> DATE(1)                 NetBSD General Commands Manual                 DATE(1)
> SYNOPSIS
>      date [-ajnu] [-d date] [-r seconds] [+format] [[[[[[CC]yy]mm]dd]HH]MM[.SS]]
> 
> http://ss64.com/osx/date.html
> Syntax
>       date [-nu] [-r seconds] [+format] [[[[[cc]yy]mm]dd]hh]mm[.ss]
> 
> http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?date
> DATE(1) 			 User Commands			       DATE(1)
> SYNOPSIS
>        date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
> 
> "man date" on Fedora:
> DATE(1)                          User Commands                         DATE(1)
> SYNOPSIS
>        date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
> 
> 
>>From these five examples, two use [[cc]yy]mmddhhmm[.ss] and three
> use mmddhhmm[[cc]yy][.ss] format.
> 
> 
> But for another tool, touch, all manpages I was able to find uniformly say
> that "touch -t DT" accepts DT = [[cc]yy]mmddhhmm[.ss] format on every Unix.
> None of them use mmddhhmm[[cc]yy][.ss] for it.
> 
> 
> I am torn here. From one POV, compatibility with "big Linux" date is good.
>>From another, mmddhhmm[[cc]yy][.ss] format is (a) stupid, (b) does not match
> "touch -t" format, and (c) doesn't seem to be the universally accepted syntax
> in wider Unix world.
> 
> 

For completness the POSIX manual says:
 date [-u] mmddhhmm[[cc]yy]

re,
 wh