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Shell Programming and Scripting

format a read command

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# 1  
Old 03-31-2010
format a read command
I have a read command like this:

Code:
print "enter the time to recover to: \n"
print "please use the format dd-mon-rrrr hh24:mi:ss"

read -n $dbtime

How do I format/check the read command to force the desired date/time format I want?
# 2  
Old 03-31-2010
Code:
$ print
-bash: print: command not found
$

We need at least some idea what language or shell you're talking about.
# 3  
Old 03-31-2010
Korn Shell .
# 4  
Old 03-31-2010
Look printf, how to change date string to epoc and so on. Maybe more easier to ask date in yyyymmdd hhmm format and then make checking ?
If you have gnu date, then date -d is also usable.
# 5  
Old 03-31-2010
Your code as you have it doesn't work.

Code:
$ read -n $dbtime
ksh: read: -n: numeric nbyte argument expected
Usage: read [-Aprsv] [-d delim] [-u fd] [-t timeout] [-n nbyte] [-N nbyte]
            [var?prompt] [var ...]
$ read -n dbtime
ksh: read: -n: numeric nbyte argument expected
Usage: read [-Aprsv] [-d delim] [-u fd] [-t timeout] [-n nbyte] [-N nbyte]
            [var?prompt] [var ...]
$ read dbtime
asdf
$

I don't think you can force read to reject input based on patterns, you'll just need to verify it yourself and make a loop:

Code:
while true
do
        print "please use the format dd-mon-rrrr hh24:mi:ss"
        read dbtime
        print "$dbtime" | egrep -iq "[0-9][0-9]-(jan|feb|mar|apr|may|jun|jul|aug|sep|oct|nov|dec)-[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9] [0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]:[0-9][0-9]" && break
        print "Incorrect format, please use the format dd-mon-rrrr hh24:mi:ss"
done

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