Re: date fails to parse seconds and nanoseconds

[Pádraig Brady]

On 06/09/2014 06:35 PM, Kasza Péter wrote:
> Date can't seem to parse seconds (or nanoseconds) when they are
> immedately after another term. E.g. trying to parse the string
> "20140609T150610" (2014-06-09-15:06:10) fails.
> 
>> % date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S  -d "20140609T150610"
>> date: invalid date ‘20140609T150610’
> 
> 
> The date parses correctly, if the seconds are removed:
> 
>> % date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S  -d "20140609T1506"
>> 20140609T100600
> 
> 
> Using the output from the previous command also gives an error:
> 
>> % date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S  -d "20140609T150600"
>> date: invalid date ‘20140609T150600’
> 
> Is this a bug or am I doing something the wrong way?

Well it's documented as such in:
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#Pure-numbers-in-date-strings

I guess not supporting seconds here avoids ambiguities as to whether you're
referring to a date or a time.

A proposal I saw recently was for date to support specifying
an input format for precise control like this, like FreeBSD supports:

  BSD> date -j -f "%H%M%S" "010203"
  Mon Jun  9 01:02:03 GMT 2014

  GNU> date -d '010203'
  Sat Feb  3 00:00:00 GMT 2001

Pádraig.