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Re: Full Julian date in date command formatting options?


From: Eric Blake
Subject: Re: Full Julian date in date command formatting options?
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 2013 13:18:22 -0600
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On 10/11/2013 11:56 AM, Reed Underwood wrote:
> I wonder if it would be alright to implement a
> full Julian date in the date command's format options
> (maybe a %J?). It could be really useful in shell
> scripts, etc.

Can you give an example of what you mean be a full Julian date?

Furthermore, can you compose a full Julian date using existing
primitives already provided by date, or is there something fundamentally
unique to your proposed format that requires burning a letter?  We are
really reluctant to burn a non-standardized letter without good cause
(burning %N to display nanoseconds is such a case - it was information
not available under any other existing format).

> 
> I'm willing to implement the feature if it's
> decided it's useful and worth the trouble.

I'm not even sure what feature you are trying to add, and why it
justifies burning a letter to add it.  Scripts are unable to take
advantage of the new letter until they have a new enough build of date
that includes the extension (may take years); whereas if you can do it
in longhand with existing options, they can use the longhand now.

Furthermore, rather than burning a %letter, we have lately tended to add
pre-canned formats: 'date --rfc-3339=seconds' being an example that
generates a given format without you having to remember which % options
build it up.  For scripting, generating a common canned format via a
command-line option rather than burning a new arcane %letter would be
easier.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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