Newbie date question

[David Yandry]

Hello,

I have what I think is a very simple question. Each monday I need the date of the following Friday. Is there a command for this?

This is my first posting so I hope that I'm in the right category.

TIA, David

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Hi David:

My date agent just went off so I guess I get to answer this one for you.

FRIDAY=$(caljd.sh $(caljd.sh -n 4))
echo "Friday = ${FRIDAY}"

You wiull need this attached script, caljd.sh.


Regards, Clay

[David Yandry]

Thank you. That worked but the output looks like "05 02 2003" but I need it to look like "2003-05-02". Is it possible to change the format or will I need to do some scripting?

David

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Invoke caljd.sh with a -u option for full usage but here's your solution:

FRIDAY=$(caljd.sh $(caljd.sh -n 4))
echo "Friday = ${FRIDAY}"


becomes

FRIDAY=$(caljd.sh -S "-" -y $(caljd.sh -n 4))
echo "Friday = ${FRIDAY}"

Pretty simple, huh?

[David Yandry]

That worked great. Thanks.

[David Yandry]

Hi again,

Now I have a different problem My script works great when I run from the shell but fails when I run it from cron. I've checked my cron entry and it looks ok.

TIA, David

[A. Clay Stephenson]

This is easy. Cron has an intentionally very sparse environment. You almost certainly need to set and export PATH so that commands are found or explicitly use full pathnames for all commands within your script.

[Bill Douglass]

Another option is to install the sh_utils package:

http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Gnu/sh_utils-2.0/

This will give your, among other things, the Gnu version of the date command. Then you can do something like:

qe2l1:/home/bdouglas> /opt/sh_utils/bin/date -d "+4 days" +%Y-%m-%d
2003-05-02

The commands are installed in /opt/sh_utils/bin and the man pages in /opt/sh_utils/man, so it is fairly easy to keep them seperate from the normal HP-UX versions of these commands.

[Olivier ROBERT]

Hi David,

If you get GNU date, you can even use a more friendly language:

$ date --date 'next friday'

Regards,

Olivier

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi David:

Many questions like yours have been answered in detail before. At the left of the Forum pages is a "search" link. You can use it to search for Forum threads matching any keyword(s) of your choice. While this is not intended to satisfy all needs, you will a wealth of hints, opinions, and often different ways of approaching a problem. Welcome to the ITRC Forum.

Regards!

...JRF...