bug#6453: coreutils: date -- Add new options for ISO 8601 date formats (-O)

[Eric Blake]

On 06/18/2010 01:42 AM, Jari Aalto wrote:
> Package: coreutils
> Version: 8.5
> Severity: wishlist
> 
> 
> I'd like to suggest adding options to cover the typical ISO 8601 dates.
> The options "O" seems to be free in date(1) manual page. Suggestions:

Nope, O is already occupied per POSIX:
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/date.html
For example, %Oe uses different numbers than %e in some locales.
And it is documented in 'date --help' (and therefore the date man page),
under the sentence: O to use the locale's alternate numeric symbols if
available.

> The output can be produced using current option set:
> 
>     %Y-%m-%d  1999-12-31
>     %Y-%j     1999-365
>     %G-W%V-%u 1999-W52-5
>     %H:%M:%S  23:59:59

Unfortunately, it seems like building the ISO formats from their
components will be be best we can do, as adding % extensions is very
difficult to justify.  However, given that we already have --rfc=2822
and --rfc-3339=TIMESPEC options that provide shortcuts for building
common RFC layouts, it may make sense to add a new command-line option
--iso-8601=TIMESPEC as shortcuts for building common ISO layouts.

> References:
> 
>     Standard - Date - ISO 9601 (Markus Kuhn)

Did you mean 8601?

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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