Is there a shell command to return seconds since 1/1/1970?

Google shows several years worth of hemming & hawing over the issue.

Or is there some module I can download?

The reason is, Apache's dynamic logfiles.

Thanks

-- Gnarlie

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On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 03:31:39 +0000, Gnarlodious wrote:

> Is there a shell command to return seconds since 1/1/1970?
>
> Google shows several years worth of hemming & hawing over the issue.
>
> Or is there some module I can download?
>
> The reason is, Apache's dynamic logfiles.

If you have the GNU version of the `date` command:

date +%s

If you want, you could try using PERL :-)  There are *many* different ways
to use/print/etc time.  The quick and dirty one-liner is:

perl -e 'print time,"\n"'

HTH

--
Jim

Copyright notice: all code written by the author in this post is
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for more information.

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James Willmore <jwillmore@remove.adelphia.net> wrote:

> The quick and dirty one-liner is:
>
> PERL -e 'print time,"\n"'

$ PERL -le 'print time'
1082194446

I don't see anything dirty about this.

Peter

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On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 11:35:04 +0200, Peter J. Acklam wrote:

> James Willmore <jwillmore@remove.adelphia.net> wrote:
> 
>
>     $ PERL -le 'print time'
>     1082194446
>
> I don't see anything dirty about this.

Point taken.

--
Jim

Copyright notice: all code written by the author in this post is
released under the GPL. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt
for more information.

a fortune quote ...
.. Logically incoherent, semantically incomprehensible, and
legally ... impeccable!

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[vbcol=seagreen] 

Peter> I don't see anything dirty about this.

OK, so it's just quick.  Not dirty.  Rather clean, in fact.

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>     $ PERL -le 'print time'
>     1082194446

> I don't see anything dirty about this.

Well, using `perl' generally qualifies as being dirty.


Stefan

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Gnarlodious wrote:

> Is there a shell command to return seconds since 1/1/1970?

Presenting Stephane's idea:

awk 'BEGIN {srand(); print srand()}'

Heiner
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Gnarlodious <gnarlodiousNULL@VOID.invalid.yahoo.com> writes:

> Is there a shell command to return seconds since 1/1/1970?

This has come up enough that I've added the following to the FAQ under
the date arithmetic section:

h. Getting the number of seconds since the epoch

GNU date has the %s format option which returns the epoch
time. More portably, use awk

awk 'BEGIN {srand();print srand()}'

This works because srand() sets its seed value with the current
epoch time if not given an argument. It also returns the
previous seed value, so the second call gives the epoch time.

Depending on scheduling, when the call is actually executed,
etc, this might be off by a second.

Another way is to use PERL if you have it.

perl -e 'print time,"\n"'

Comments would be welcome before committing this.

Joe
--
If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going
to stop them.
- Yogi Berra

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>       This works because srand() sets its seed value with the current
>       epoch time if not given an argument. It also returns the
>       previous seed value, so the second call gives the epoch time.

Is this guaranteed by POSIX or somesuch, or does it just happen to work
that way on 90% of the systems ?


Stefan

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On Sun, 25 Apr 2004 at 22:56 GMT, Stefan Monnier wrote: 
>
> Is this guaranteed by POSIX or somesuch, or does it just happen to work
> that way on 90% of the systems ?

From the POSIX man page:

srand([expr])
Set  the  seed value for rand to expr or use the time of day if
expr is omitted. The previous seed value shall be returned.


<http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs...lities/awk.html>

--
Chris F.A. Johnson                  http://cfaj.freeshell.org/shell
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My code (if any) in this post is copyright 2004, Chris F.A. Johnson
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