dateh

A GNU date wrapper that adds several format specifiers that may prove useful to some folks.

The first set deals with relative date outputs (English only):

Spec	Description
`@{d}`	relative date, abbrev date names (e.g. `yesterday`, `next Fri`, `17 days ago`)
`@{D}`	like `@{d}`, only with full date names (e.g. `next Friday`, `17 days' time`)
`@{d+}`	like `@{d}`, but falls back to user-configurable date representation if outside 1 week's range (default: `%Y-%m-%d`)
`@{w}`	relative week (e.g. `last week`, `3 weeks' time`)
`@{m}`	relative month (e.g. `last month`, `3 months' time`)
`@{y}`	relative year (e.g. `last year`, `3 years' time`)
`@{h}`	auto-select relative representation (abbreviated day name)
`@{H}`	auto-select relative representation (full day name)

NOTE: @{d} and @{D} outputs follow GNU date conventions for relative date input:

last XYZ for dates up to 7 days ago
next XYZ for dates up to 7 days in the future

The second set deals with ordinal day-of-month representations:

Spec	Description
`@{o}`	ordinal day-of-month, short-form (e.g. `29th`)
`@{O}`	ordinal day-of-month, long-form (e.g. `twenty-ninth`)

Dependencies

GNU date must be in your PATH.

Installation

Copy dateh to a directory in your PATH.

Usage

dateh takes the same options and format specifiers as GNU date, in addition to:

-h|--help to print dateh-specific help
-H|--longhelp to print both dateh and date help
-V|--version to print dateh version

If the DATEH_DEFAULT_FORMAT environment variable is set, dateh uses its value as the fallback date representation for the @{d+} specifier (default: %Y-%m-%d).

Examples

$ dateh
Sun Jan 27 20:05:00 +08 2019

$ dateh -d "now" "+@{D} %X"
today 20:05:00

$ dateh -d "now + 3 weeks" "+the @{O} of %B, %Y"
the seventeenth of February, 2019

$ DATEH_DEFAULT_FORMAT=%m/%d/%Y dateh -d "last month" \
     "+@{d+}, @{w}, @{m}, @{y} %H:%M %P"
12/27/2018, 4 weeks ago, last month, last year 20:05 pm