Convert date formats in bash

by 
#since this was yesterday
date -dyesterday +%Y%m%d

#more precise, and more recommended
date -d'27 JUN 2011' +%Y%m%d

#assuming this is similar to yesterdays `date` question from you 
#http://stackoverflow.com/q/6497525/638649
date -d'last-monday' +%Y%m%d

#going on @seth's comment you could do this
DATE="27 jun 2011"; date -d"$DATE" +%Y%m%d

#or a method to read it from stdin
read -p "  Get date >> " DATE; printf "  AS YYYYMMDD format >> %s"  `date
-d"$DATE" +%Y%m%d`    

#which then outputs the following:
#Get date >> 27 june 2011   
#AS YYYYMMDD format >> 20110627

#if you really want to use awk
echo "27 june 2011" | awk '{print "date -d\""$1FS$2FS$3"\" +%Y%m%d"}' | bash

#note | bash just redirects awk's output to the shell to be executed
#FS is field separator, in this case you can use $0 to print the line
#But this is useful if you have more than one date on a line

More on Dates

note this only works on GNU date

I have read that:

Solaris version of date, which is unable
to support -d can be resolve with
replacing sunfreeware.com version of
date

More Related Contents:

  1. sh: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected error
  2. How to merge two files using AWK? [duplicate]
  3. Fastest way to find lines of a file from another larger file in Bash
  4. How can I quickly sum all numbers in a file?
  5. equivalent date from GNU to solaris
  6. Uppercasing First Letter of Words Using SED
  7. Insert multiple lines into a file after specified pattern using shell script
  8. Using `date` command to get previous, current and next month
  9. Print date for the monday of the current week (in bash)
  10. How can I trim white space from a variable in awk?
  11. How do I get the difference between two dates under bash [duplicate]
  12. Using awk to count the number of occurrences of a word in a column
  13. Save modifications in place with awk
  14. Why should eval be avoided in Bash, and what should I use instead?
  15. How to kill a child process after a given timeout in Bash?
  16. The ‘eval’ command in Bash and its typical uses
  17. Why do you need to put #!/bin/bash at the beginning of a script file?
  18. How to set environment variable for everyone under my linux system?
  19. Command not found when using sudo
  20. How to loop over directories in Linux?
  21. How to redirect stderr and stdout to different files in the same line in script?
  22. How to use ‘cp’ command to exclude a specific directory?
  23. Is it OK to use the same input file as output of a piped command?
  24. Redirecting command output in docker
  25. How to get file creation date/time in Bash/Debian?
  26. Disable and re-enable address space layout randomization only for myself
  27. Check if a variable exists in a list in Bash
  28. Doesn’t sh support process substitution
  29. Alias with variable in bash [duplicate]
  30. Creating temporary files in bash

Leave a Comment