topic Re: date less 7 days...help? in Operating System - Linux

date less 7 days...help?

Coolmar — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 14:50:05 GMT

Hi,

I have to create a script that will name a file with the date - less 7 days. So it should look like the following:

file.20070219 -> file.20070212

I guess this would get very tricky at the beginning of a month as the day and month would change.

Re: date less 7 days...help?

Steven Schweda — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:16:55 GMT

No, it's actually pretty easy to get such a
string. For example:

alp $ write sys$output f$element( 0, " ", f$cvtime( "today-7-")) - "-" - "-"
20070212

Or, for three weeks, to cross a month
boundary:

alp $ write sys$output f$element( 0, " ", f$cvtime( "today-21-")) - "-" - "-"
20070129

Oops. Wrong operating system. Never mind.

Re: date less 7 days...help?

James R. Ferguson — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:19:47 GMT

Hi:

Pass the yyyymmdd you need to this Perl snippet. As written, you will be returned the date seven days ago:

# perl -MDate::Calc=Add_Delta_Days -wle '($y,$m,$d)=unpack "A4A2A2",$ARGV[0];($ny,$nm,$nd)=Add_Delta_Days($y,$m,$d,-7);printf "%4d%02d%02d\n",$ny,$nm,$nd' 20070219

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: date less 7 days...help?

Bill Hassell — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:22:29 GMT

Yeah, it gets tricky since dates have so many exceptions. Clay has created a great script to handle exactly this type of situation (attached).

Re: date less 7 days...help?

A. Clay Stephenson — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:24:38 GMT

For almost any date question the answer is caljd.sh (or caljd.sl):

DTMINUS7=$(caljd.sh -y -s $(caljd.sh -p 7))
echo "7 days ago was ${DTMINUS7}"

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

Re: date less 7 days...help?

Hein van den Heuvel — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:29:58 GMT

Never invent your own wheel / date-math

Never even invent your own usage of that math!

It has all been done before. Just google.
I'm sur ethat in the minutes past someone will have replied with Clay's 'date hammer.
If not, goolge for: caljd.sh

Here are two PERL code snippets I might use though. They both figure out the time in seconds, then subtract 7 days worth of seconds:

---- show date math.pl ---
use Time::Local;
my $day = 86400;
($y,$mo,$d) = unpack 'a4a2a2', shift;
$new_time = timelocal(0,0,0,$d,$mo - 1,$y - 1900) - 7*$day;
($s,$m,$h,$d,$m,$y)=localtime($new_time);
printf "%04d%02d%02d\n", $y+1900, $m+1, $d;

--------------------- rename_to_week_ago.pl ----

use Time::Local;
my $day = 86400;
$_ = shift or die "Please provide a file to rename";
if (/(.*)\.(\d{4})(\d\d)(\d\d)$/) {
$new_time = timelocal(0,0,0,$4,$3 - 1,$2 - 1900) - 7*$day;
($s,$m,$h,$d,$m,$y)=localtime($new_time);
$new_name = sprintf "%s.%04d%02d%02d\n", $1, $y+1900, $m+1, $d;
rename $_, $new_name;
} else {
die "filespec not in xxx.yyyymmdd format";
}

Re: date less 7 days...help?

James R. Ferguson — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 15:34:10 GMT

Hi (again):

By the way, given your filename format, simply use the shell parameter substitution to snip off the date to convert:

# FILE=file.20070219;DATE=`echo ${FILE##*.}`

...and then (from my first post) pass the ${DATE} thus derived to the Perl script as its argument:

# perl -MDate::Calc=Add_Delta_Days -wle '($y,$m,$d)=unpack "A4A2A2",$ARGV[0];($ny,$nm,$nd)=Add_Delta_Days($y,$m,$d,-7);printf "%4d%02d%02d\n",$ny,$nm,$nd' ${DATE}

Regards!

...JRF...

Re: date less 7 days...help?

Peter Godron — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 03:41:24 GMT

Coolmar,
get yourself gnu date !
date -d '1 week ago'

For other examples see:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/hp/hpux-faq/section-168.html

Re: date less 7 days...help?

Coolmar — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 08:04:56 GMT

Thanks everyone!