How to get the difference between two dates
Using GNU date, first parse the dates into timestamps and work on those:
# get the seconds passed since 2010 (localtime) echo $(($(date +%s) - $(date -d "2010-01-01 00:00:00" +%s)))
To print that as a human-readable value you'll have to do some math:
# some constants minute_secs=60 hour_secs=$((60 * minute_secs)) day_secs=$((24 * hour_secs)) # get total seconds_since=$(($(date +%s) - $(date -d "2010-01-01 00:00:00" +%s))) # parse days=$((seconds_since / day_secs)) hours=$((seconds_since % day_secs / hour_secs)) minutes=$((seconds_since % day_secs % hour_secs / minute_secs)) seconds=$((seconds_since % day_secs % hour_secs % minute_secs)) # pretty-print echo "$days days, $hours hours, $minutes minutes and $seconds seconds."
To parse the timestamp back to a readable date, using GNU date:
# get a date that is 90 days into the future (recent GNU date) date -d "@$(($(date +%s) + 60 * 60 * 24 * 90))"
(See FAQ #70 for more about converting Unix timestamps into human-readable dates.)