harvey/sys/man/1/seconds

.TH SECONDS 1 
.SH NAME
seconds \- convert human-readable date (and time) to seconds since epoch
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B seconds
.I date
\&...
.SH DESCRIPTION
.I Seconds
prints the number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970
corresponding to one or more human-readable
.IR date s.
Each
.I date
must be
.I one
argument;
it will usually be necessary to enclose it in quotes.
.PP
.I Seconds
accepts a somewhat wider range of input than just output from
.IR date (1).
The main requirement is that the date must be fully specified,
with a day of month, month and year
in any order.
The month must be an English name (or abbreviation),
not a number, and the year must contain 4 digits.
Unambiguous time-zone names are understood (i.e., not
.LR IST )
or time zones may be written as
.IR ±hhmm .
Case is ignored.
.SH EXAMPLES
Print the names of all files under
.L \&.
modified since the start of 23 May 2011.
.IP
.EX
du -ta | awk '$1 >= '^`{seconds '23 may 2011'}^' {print $2}'
.EE
.SH SEE ALSO
.IR date (1),
.IR du (1),
.IR mtime (1),
.IR ctime (2)
.SH BUGS
All-numeric dates, popular in the USA, are simply ambiguous,
more so if the year is truncated to 2 digits.