setting the system date

qneill · #1 (**permalink**) 03-11-2009

Okay so I'm not really a newbie, but this bugs the crap out of me (rant on).

Every so often I need to change the system time. I run "man date" and always find the "date -s" command, but for who knows how long, the manual page has *never* listed the format of the input string required to set the date. I eventually remember to run "info date" and get to a usable example. That leaves me with

1) why doesn't the man page specify this format
2) why doesn't the man page even mention that you can do things like

date --set='+2 minutes'

Okay, rant off. Oh, and any of you Unix-heads out there know why things are this way in a relatively mundane manual page?
--
Quentin

Corona688 · #2 (**permalink**) 03-11-2009

The manpage for GNU date seems straightforward enough:

Code:

DATE(1)                          User Commands                         DATE(1)



NAME
       date - print or set the system date and time

SYNOPSIS
       date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
       date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

DESCRIPTION
       Display the current time in the given FORMAT, or set the system date.

...

Though it does not mention the '+2 minutes' thing either. The GNU tools are occasionally evangelical about telling you to use their special fancy 'info' command instead of old-fashioned 'man' -- really old fashioned, dating from the late 70's! A habit I find detestable considering how little an improvement the 'info' system really seems to be on it. If they want sections and hyperlinks they should just do real HTML, bundle lynx, and be done with it.

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