UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I need to capture a file's creation/modification date and time and convert this to a different format, whilst I can easily get the existing format from a ls -l | awk ' { print $......}' or a cut command I do not know how to convert it to a desired format?

I should add that at present the ls -l on the system I am using gives a date format of:-


ls -l |awk '{print $7" "$6" "$8" "} '

30 May 22:44
17 May 10:06

Whilst I need the format to be YYYY.MM.DD

eg 2002.05.10

any ideas much appreciated

Hi there.

You need to convert it to what kind of format? DD-MM-YYYY? If you wanto to switch the position of 'ls -l' creation/modification date, you can use the same command that you used, exchanging the posistion of the fields that awk gets. EX.

ls -l |awk '{print $7" "$6" "$8" "} '

to display it in DD-MM-YYYY(TIME)