bb date

[walter harms]

hi Chey,
no problem with gnu-date compatibility.
the problem is 'where to stop' ?
You can not assume that bb will harbour a parser like date. So date
should support only the most simple format like the  [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
additional formats like ISO 8601 whatever should supported with -D even
when it is a bb expansion.

rationale: bb is intended for embedded systems were this is used in scripting,
and in that case you know the time format in advance. setting the time by hand
should be no surprise therefore the std. format is ok.

i posted a patch for gnu-date to add -D <hint> perhaps you can pick it up and
expand it for setting also. gnu-date may also learn from bb-date.

re,
 walter


Chey wrote:
> The -D switch does what it's supposed to there is no doubt about that.
> But the GNU date command doesn't like that switch at all.
> 
> I was hoping it would be possible to add another date format that the
> BB's date command would accept as a valid date for setting the date
> with 'date -s'. Possibly one of the following:
> 
> 2006-09-08 08:09:10 - fairly standard format also accepted by GNU date
> (ISO 8601 i think)
> Fri, 08 Sep 2006 08:11:25 -0400 - RFC 2822 date format accepted by GNU
> date as well
> 09/08/2006 08:13:12 - another format accepted by GNU date
> 
> The first one is probably the best bet and fairly easy to implement. I
> don't see this as a bug but a feature request and will not press it.
> If others think it's a good idea then great maybe someone can
> implement it. If not...like i said i won't press it :) I know most
> people are busy doing other things.
> 
> Thanks all,
> Chey
> 
> 
> On 9/8/06, walter harms <wharms at bfs.de> wrote:
>> Hi chey,
>> i had the same problem some time ago (with -d <datum> and format was not
>> supported with bb). Since the gnu-date parser is rather large, i added the
>> -D switch as hint.
>>
>> perhaps you can change the code to use the -D switch for interpreting the
>> -s String. that would be a BB extension but i see that it would be helpful.
>>
>> re,
>>  wh
>>
>>
>> Chey wrote:
>>> By "portability" setting the date I mean using the same command and
>>> date format to set the date wether it be using BB's date command or
>>> the using the date command packaged with coreutils. For example, the
>>> following two commands work with busybox's date command but do not
>>> work on my Debian system which has a default coreutils package
>>> installed.
>>>
>>> devbox:/# date -s `date +%m%d%H%M%Y.%S`
>>> date: invalid date `090719502006.56'
>>> devbox:/# date -s `date +%Y.%m.%d-%H:%M:%S`
>>> date: invalid date `2006.09.07-19:51:14'
>>>
>>> It seems that the only two formats that the BB date command supports
>>> are the two formats above which do not work with Debian and probably
>>> don't work with other systems. The second format above seems to be
>>> custom to BB.
>>>
>>> To sum things up, I'm looking for the BB date command to accept more
>>> (at least one) standard date format when setting the date.
>>>
>>> If BB supports another format and I missed this in the code please let me know.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Chey
>>>
>>>
>>> On 9/7/06, Rich Felker <dalias at aerifal.cx> wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 02:50:10PM -0400, Chey wrote:
>>>>> BB's date command seems to only accept two formats for setting the
>>>>> date. Are these to formats subject to bb's date command only or should
>>>>> those two formats work on other distros as well?
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm asking because I cannot set the date with bb's date command and
>>>>> use that same command to set the date on my Debian box.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm having trouble creating a portable script to set the date because of this.
>>>> There's no such thing as "portably setting the date" since POSIX does
>>>> not specify that the date can be changed at all. :) However in terms
>>>> of working on most/all legacy implementations and BB, I believe one of
>>>> the formats works well. Look at the comments in the source; I seem to
>>>> remember them being helpful.
>>>>
>>>> Rich
>>>>
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>>>>
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>>>
>>>
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