prompt date string with bash

[kazu_1]

I have stack with making shell programming. I hope somebody will help me!

[objective]
Try to prompt date string that shows the date of 2 month ago from today.

I know how to make it on Solaris and Aix.
eg. dst=`env TZ=JST+1440 date +%Y%m%d`
echo $dst
This will prompt like 20050504

However, it doesn't work on HPUX... Please does sombody give me some advice.

Thank you in advance.

[Devesh Pant_1 · Accepted solution]

Kazu,

here is one way
echo $(sh -c "TZ=$(date +%Z)+1440; export TZ; date '+%m%d%y'")

where 1440 is the number of hours between two months which I have taken from your example above

thanks
Devesh

[A. Clay Stephenson]

First of all, the date 2 months ago is a very imprecise designation. For example, what is 2 months before 30-Apr-2005. 30-Feb-2005? I don't think so. If you change your question to something like 60 before today then thats much easier.

Use the attached caljd.sh (or search for caljd.pl; it works just the same).

#!/usr/bin/sh
DT=$(caljd.sh -y -s $(caljd.sh -p 60))
echo "60 days ago was ${DT}"

Invoke as caljd.sh -u for full usage and examples.

[Devesh Pant_1]

Kazu,
I forgot you wanted it in a script, I gave i for the command line
okay here it is

dst=`sh -c "TZ=$(date +%Z)+1440; export TZ; date '+%m%d%y'")`
echo $dst

DP

[kazu_1]

Hello Devesh and Clay.

Sorry for replying so late. I appliciate what you have given me advice and tips.

Now I have found why I couldn't get the target date. The reason is that the environmental variable TZ was set to "MST7MDT". I changed it to "JST-9", then the command "env TZ=JST+15 date" works!

Sorry for putting such a dum thread... I'm going to close this thread.

Best regards,

kazu

[kazu_1]

Before:

# env | grep TZ
# TZ=MST7MDT

on this setting, a command "env TZ=JST+15 date" does not provide the correct answer. As above command, my timezone is JST so that TZ variable must change to JST. I changed it to JST,

After:

# env | grep TZ
# TZ=JST-9

then, the command works. The command gets yesterday's date.