General Purpose Date Script


 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers General Purpose Date Script
# 8  
Old 01-16-2014
Another update, with more bugfixes, some code simplifications, and a --help option. I'm keeping the most up-to-date code in the OP now.
# 9  
Old 01-17-2014
Hi.

Thanks for taking the time to do this.

I usually add warnings and strict to help avoid errors. Adding those yields:
Code:
Global symbol "$offset" requires explicit package name at ./date.pl line 99.  (about 10 times).

and
Code:
$ ./date.pl 
Use of uninitialized value $input in split at ./date.pl line 65.
Use of uninitialized value $offset in multiplication (*) at ./date.pl line 144.

The line numbers reflect the addition of lines for use strict; and use warnings;

Best wishes ... cheers, drl
This User Gave Thanks to drl For This Post:
# 10  
Old 01-17-2014
warnings and strict added, errors corrected. v0.0.6 now.

Last edited by Corona688; 01-17-2014 at 11:42 AM..
# 11  
Old 05-04-2016
Here is v0.0.7, with a little more refined input detection. It can handle more informal dates and time, like:

Code:
$ ./gdate.pl -d "Mar 10, 2016 1:51:09 PM CST"

2016-03-10 13:51:09

$ ./date.pl -d "mon 2"

2016-05-02 10:43:46

$

Unknown tokens in the -d string are no longer a fatal error, it skips over them and only prints warnings given -v.

It's possible -- even likely -- that loosening the syntax has introduced unintended bugs, so I'm not putting it in the OP just yet. Any comments or suggestions?

Code:
#!/usr/bin/perl

use POSIX;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $cmdstr="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S";
my ($input, $arg, $sign, $file,$offset)=("", undef, 0, undef,0);
my $verbose=0;
my ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst);

my %days = ( "sun" => 0, "sunday" => 0,
        "mon" => 1, "monday" => 1,
        "tue" => 2, "tues" => 2, "tuesday" => 2,
        "wed" => 3, "wednesday" => 3,
        "thu" => 4, "thurs" => 4, "thursday" => 4,
        "fri" => 5, "friday" => 5,
        "sat" => 6, "saturday" => 6 );

my %month = (   "jan" => 0, "january" => 0,"feb" => 1, "february" => 1,
                "mar" => 2, "march" => 2,"apr" => 3, "april" => 3,
                "may" => 4,"jun" => 5, "june" => 5,
                "jul" => 6, "july" => 6,"aug" => 7, "august" => 7,
                "sep" => 8, "sept" => 8, "september" => 8,
                "oct" => 9, "october" => 9,"nov" => 10, "november" => 10,
                "dec" => 11, "december" => 11 );

sub set { # Sets the big mess of time variables from epoch input
        ($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst)=localtime(shift);
}

set(time);

# Commandline parsing stuff
while(defined($arg=shift)) {
        if($arg =~ /^--date=/)  {       $input=substr($arg, 7);         }
        elsif($arg eq "-v")     {       $verbose=1;                     }
        elsif($arg eq "-d")   {       $input=shift;                   }
        elsif($arg eq "-r")   {       $file=shift;                    }
        elsif($arg =~ /^--reference=/) {$file=substr($arg, 12);         }
        elsif($arg =~/^\+/)     {       $cmdstr=substr($arg,1);         }
        elsif($arg =~/^-h|--help|--version$/) {
                print STDERR <<"EOT";
date.pl v0.0.7, Tyler Montbriand, 2016.  Free PERL date calc/converter.

Usage:
 -d "time string"       string like "YYYYMMDD", "YYYY/MM/DD",
                        "HHMMSS", "HH:MM:SS", "\@epoch", "- 3 days",
                        "Mar 3 2016 1:16:09 AM",
                        etc.  You can string them together, like
                        "\@1343322750 - 3 days".

 -r /path/to/file       Show mtime of the given file, not current time.

 +"formatstring"        Give strftime this format string instead of the
                        default "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S".  See 'man strftime'

 -v                     Verbose, warn when input formatting is ignored.

Examples:
 date.pl                        # current time in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
 TZ="UTC" ./date.pl             # Use an alternate time zone
 date.pl +"%a %b %d %Y %r"      # Like Thu Jan 16 2014 12:58:59 PM
 date.pl -d "+ 3 days"          # Current time plus three days
 date.pl -d "\@1343322750"      # exact time in epoch seconds
 date.pl -d "2013/01/02 12:00:00"# exact time in YYYYMMDD HHMMSS
 date.pl -r /etc/passwd         # display mtime of /etc/passwd
 date.pl -r /etc/passwd -d "12:00:00" # date of /etc/passwd, time of noon
EOT
                exit(1);
        }
        else {       die("unknown argument $arg, try --help");   }
}

if(defined($file)) { # stat file to get mtime
        my ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
               $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks)
               = stat($file);

        defined($dev) || die("No such file $file");

        set($mtime);
}

# Put the date string back into argv, split on any whitespace or grammar
unshift(@ARGV, split(/[ \r\n\t,]+/, $input));

while(defined($arg=shift))
{
        # Need to split +1 into +1
        if($arg =~ /^[+]/) {    $sign=1;        $arg=substr($arg,1);    }
        elsif($arg =~ /^-/) {   $sign=-1;       $arg=substr($arg,1);    }

        ################## DATE FORMAT DETECTION ########################

        # Month and date
        if(exists($month{tolower($arg)}) && ($ARGV[0] =~ /^[0-9]+$/) )
        {
                $mon=$month{tolower($arg)};
                $mday=shift;
                $mday = $mday + 0;
                next;
        }

        # Things like "Mon 12" are day of month
        if(exists($days{tolower($arg)})) {
                if($ARGV[0] =~ /^[0-9]+$/)
                {
                        $mday=$ARGV[0] + 0;
                        shift;
                }
                next;
        }

        # A bare four digit number beginning with 19 or 20 is probably a year
        if($arg =~ /^(19[0-9][0-9])|(2[0-9][0-9][0-9])$/)
        {
                $year=$arg - 1900;
                next;
        }

        # @1234 means seconds in epoch time
        if($arg =~ /^@([0-9]+)$/)      {        set($1+0);  next;        }

        # Checks for YYYYMMDD or YYYY/MM/DD time
        # TODO:  Check for YYMMDD dates
        # TODO:  Check for YYYYDDMM dates (ugh)
        if($arg =~ /^([0-9]{4})([\/-]?)([0-9]{2})\2([0-9]{2})/)
        {
                ($year,$mon,$mday)=($1-1900,$3-1,$4+0);
                ($sec,$min,$hour)=(0,0,0);
                next;
        }

        # HH:MM:SS times
        if($arg =~ /([0-2]?[0-9]):([0-5][0-9]):([0-5][0-9])(.[0-9]+)?$/)
        {
                ($sec,$min,$hour)=($3+0, $2+0, $1+0);

                # Handle time with PM in it
                if(tolower($ARGV[0]) eq "pm")
                {
                        shift;
                        if($hour >= 1) { $hour += 12; }
                }
                elsif(tolower($ARGV[0]) == "am")
                {
                        shift;
                        if($hour == 12) { $hour -= 12;  }
                }
                next;
        }

        # As last resort, assume its a pure number.
        if($arg =~ /^([0-9]+)$/) {
                ($sign != 0) ||
                die("offset without unit -- probably unrecognized format");

                $offset=$1+0;
                next;
        }

        if($arg =~ /^seconds?$/)   { } # Just take seconds at face value
        elsif($arg =~ /^minutes?$/)     {       $offset *= 60;          }
        elsif($arg =~ /^hours?/)        {       $offset *= 60*60;       }
        elsif($arg =~ /^days?/)         {       $offset *= 60*60*24;    }
        elsif($arg =~ /^weeks?/)        {       $offset *= 60*60*24*7;  }
        elsif($arg =~ /^months?$/)      {

                                        $mon += ($offset*$sign);

                                        while($mon > 12)
                                        {
                                                $mon-=12;
                                                $year++;
                                        }

                                        while($mon < 0)
                                        {
                                                $mon+=12;
                                                $year--;
                                        }

                                        $sign=0;
                                        $offset=0;
                                }
        elsif ($arg =~ /^years?$/) {
                                        $year += ($offset*$sign);
                                        $sign=0;
                                        $offset=0;
                                }
        elsif($arg =~ /^now$/)  {       set(time);      }
        elsif(length($arg) == 0){       } # Empty string?  Ignore
        elsif($verbose) {
                print STDERR "Unknown argument $arg\n";
        }
}

# Convert the altered year, month, etc back into epoch time.
my $ref=mktime($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$year,$wday,$yday,$isdst);

# Print the calculated time plus offset
print strftime($cmdstr."\n", localtime($ref + ($sign*$offset)));
exit(0);

This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
# 12  
Old 05-04-2016
Brilliant and versatile!

One thought - how about considering/including the locales? Like
Code:
locale mon
Januar;Februar;März;April;Mai;Juni;Juli;August;September;Oktober;November;Dezember
locale abmon
Jan;Feb;Mär;Apr;Mai;Jun;Jul;Aug;Sep;Okt;Nov;Dez

?
# 13  
Old 05-05-2016
I'm not certain whether I want to depend on outside locale or even the Perl locale module; this script sees the most use as a kludge on old systems, and the only time locale generally comes up on unix.com is when people are fighting its problems. Parsing lists is a lot shorter than the hash syntax either way, though, so I'm happy to leave that choice to the user.

Code:
# loadhash(\%hash, "A;B", "a;b")
# sets $hash{A}=0, $hash{B}=1, $hash{a}=0, $hash{b}=1
sub loadhash {
        my ($h,$n)=(shift,0);
        foreach(@_)     { $n=0; foreach(split('[;\n]', lc($_))) { ${$h}{$_}=$n++; } }
}

#loadhash(\%month, `locale mon`, `locale abmon`);
loadhash(\%month, "January;February;March;April;May;June;July;August;September;October;November;December",
        "Jan;Feb;Mar;Apr;May;Jun;Jul;Aug;Sep;Oct;Nov;Dec");
#loadhash(\%days, `locale day`, `locale abday`);
loadhash(\%days, "Sunday;Monday;Tuesday;Wednesday;Thursday;Friday;Saturday",
        "Sun;Mon;Tues;Wed;Thurs;Fri;Sat");

Beginning to understand why people play 'perl golf' now, if the goal is to write a subroutine shorter than the 10 lines of repetition its to replace...!
# 14  
Old 05-05-2016
Hi.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corona688
I'm not certain whether I want to depend on outside locale or even the Perl locale module; this script sees the most use as a kludge on old systems ...
I think Corona688 and I have had a discussion about perl modules -- I tend to prefer to use them to make code shorter, and I think Corona688 likes his code to be as independent as possible.

I usually recommend this perl date code when the user (typically on older Solaris or AIX) cannot use GNU date or the dateuitls suite, so I definitely agree with Corona688's position in such situations.

Thanks again to Corona688 for taking the time to provide this.

Best wishes ... cheers, drl
Login or Register to Ask a Question

Previous Thread | Next Thread

8 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

General Purpose XML Processing

I've been kicking this around for a while now, I might as well post it here. v0.0.9, now properly supporting self-closing tags. v0.0.8, an important quoting fix and a minor change which should handle special <? <!-- etc. tags without seizing up as often. Otherwise the code hasn't changed much.... (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: Corona688
6 Replies

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

Script to determine Date,TotalFile,total size of file based on date

I have file listed like below -rw-r--r--+ 1 test test 17M Nov 26 14:43 test1.gz -rw-r--r--+ 1 test test 0 Nov 26 14:44 test2.gz -rw-r--r--+ 1 test test 0 Nov 27 10:41 test3.gz -rw-r--r--+ 1 test test 244K Nov 27 10:41 test4.gz -rw-r--r--+ 1 test test 17M Nov 27 10:41 test5.gz I... (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: krish2014
5 Replies

3. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Purpose of - (hypen) in script or command line

Hi, I am new for unix and I am following ABS guide. What is the purpose of - (hypen ) in the below command and What it will do in this?. Can anyone explain it in detail. Rest of the things in the below command I understood somewhat. (cd /source/directory && tar cf - . ) | (cd /dest/directory &&... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: gwgreen1
1 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

script to fill up disk space for testing purpose

Hello everyone I am new to this forum I am working on a project and needed a test script to fill up a disk partition /tmp/data to see how the program fails. The system I am working on is a redhat 5.3. Is there anything out there? Thanks. (10 Replies)
Discussion started by: dp100022
10 Replies

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

awk (?) help or just general script

I have two files (___ represents blanks) Foo1 1000 345 456 1001 876 908 1002 ___ 786 1003 643 908 1004 345 234 and Foo2 1000 345 1001 876 1002 111 1003 643 1004 345 (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: garethsays
3 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

General Q: how to run/schedule a php script from cron jobs maybe via bash from shell?

Status quo is, within a web application, which is coded completely in php (not by me, I dont know php), I have to fill out several fields, and execute it manually by clicking the "go" button in my browser, several times a day. Thats because: The script itself pulls data (textfiles) from a... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: lowmaster
3 Replies

7. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

whats the purpose of the following script?

whats the purpose of the following script? who could run it? To what is the script refering that exceeds 75%? The mailbox? What does sed 's/%//' do? (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: vrn
1 Replies

8. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Looking for a general purpose System Monitor

Does anyone have any scripts or suggestions on a general purpose Unix/Linux monitoring tool? (5 Replies)
Discussion started by: darthur
5 Replies
Login or Register to Ask a Question