UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am familiar with using the 'date' command to get the current date but I have a situation where I need to get the previous day's date as well as the date two days prior. Theoretically I could use 'expr' to compute these values but I need it to work in instances where the previous month's dates could come into play (i.e. current date 20080601, would need 20080531 and 20080530 as well). Is there a way to feed a parameter to 'date' where it would return the previous day's date (or two days prior's date)?

thanks for any assistance with this

Read the FAQ?
https://www.unix.com/answers-frequent...rithmetic.html

If you are using ksh93, the following works. Unfortunately not yet available in bash or zsh.

Code:

$ printf "%(%Y-%m-%d)T\n" "1 day ago"
2008-06-16
$ printf "%(%Y-%m-%d)T\n" "2 days ago"
2008-06-15
$