2009-12-06

date command madness

OK, is it me or am I being thick.

Linux date command takes a -d argument which is very useful as it allows a description of the time you want.

e.g. date -d "5 minutes" done at 08:23:37 today gives Sun Dec 6 08:28:38 GMT 2009
Its really useful. You can even do things like date -d "next tuesday" which says Tue Dec 8 00:00:00 GMT 2009. I use it all the time.

But...

date -d "07:48 -1 minute" gives Sun Dec 6 07:50:00 GMT 2009
date -d "07:48 -2 minute" gives Sun Dec 6 07:51:00 GMT 2009
date -d "07:48 -3 minute" gives Sun Dec 6 07:52:00 GMT 2009
date -d "07:48 -4 minute" gives Sun Dec 6 07:53:00 GMT 2009

and...

date -d "07:48 +1 minute" gives Sun Dec 6 07:48:00 GMT 2009
date -d "07:48 +2 minute" gives Sun Dec 6 07:47:00 GMT 2009
date -d "07:48 +3 minute" gives Sun Dec 6 07:46:00 GMT 2009
date -d "07:48 +4 minute" gives Sun Dec 6 07:45:00 GMT 2009

Is it just me or is that kind of backwards...

1 comment:

  1. OK, it is me going mad. Someone has identified WTF it is doing!

    The +N or +N is seen as a time zone.
    07:48 +4 means 07:49+0004 so takes 4 minutes off the time

    The "minute" is seen as "add one minute"

    To get +ve I just need N minute.
    date -d "07:48 4 minute" is 07:52

    To get -ve I just add "ago".
    date -d "07:48 4 minute ago" is 07:44

    Thanks for Simon on irc.

    ReplyDelete

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