UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

You can't do this:
if [ $End_Date != '-' -a $End_Date > $Start_Date ]; then

OK, you can do that, but you are redirecting the output of the [ command into a file named for your start date with "> $Start_Date" and your test is:
if [ $End_Date != '-' -a $End_Date ]; then

This collapses to testing if $End_Date is null or not.

All of this is legal, but possibly not what you intended.

You make a good point.

What I want to do is make sure that the End_date is larger than the Start_Date. What is the operand for that?

-gt

You can do "man test" to all of the options.

The -gt option looks for intigers, but I have a date.

How do I get test to evaluate dates?

The test(1) utility cannot handle dates. I suggest you convert your dates to the Julian format i.e. integers and then use test to compare these integers

Here is a pointer to an SysAdmin article on the subject:

Sys Admin > v12, i07: Date Arithmetic with the Shell

-gt can handle large integers. If the date is YYYYMMDD format, it should work.

I need time as well...will this still be true if I do:

YYYYMMDDHHMMSS