UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Using the date command

how do get yesterday's date??

e.g.
date '+%b%e%Y'

July 30 2002

I need to get

July 29 2002

using the date command.

Thanx

(p.s. sorry if it's a very obvious question)

On at least some versions of UNIX, try the "v" flag:

date -v-24H

Thanks Marc

But my version of unix (sun solaris 2.6) dosen't have the -v option....

Try this...It works but I'm not 100% sure how....(educated guess as to how going on here)

my_date=`TZ=a12 date +%Y%m%d%H` (H gives you the hour for verification)

The 12 indicates how many hours behind GMT you want the time to be...

I use GMT + 12 as my timezone.....so to get 24 hours before this I need to go from +12 to -12....so I use a12.

If your timezone is GMT then a24 would do it. If you're 8 hours behind GMT then a32 would be used (8 behind and 1 more day).

I think GMT is used here as the systems default timezone where one is not specified. Therefore if your system TZ is different - you'll need to work that out and adjust accordingly.

See my datecalc script for one solution.

Thanx everyone !!! That worked fine... also I had another script.

But just out of curiosity.... Isn't there any OS built system utility
e.g. something like "sysdate"

Regds,
Minaz

I did it another way. Put a cron to run at 2315 daily to create a file with yesterday's date in whatever format u need. ANd read the file when u want. It is not the most elegant solution but it works for me!!