CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashfedora
Dinesh Subedi
Dinesh Subedi

Reputation: 2663

Bash date command invalid date

In linux bash when I enter date -d "1986-01-01" it shows error

date: invalid date "1986-01-01"

when date -d "1986-01-02" it works

when date -d "1987-01-01" it also works

Why date -d "1986-01-01" shows error in Linux Bash shell.

I am using Fedora 16

Upvotes: 3

Views: 9742

Answers (2)

nosid
nosid

Reputation: 50024

Nepal changed its timezone at the beginning of 1986. The following table is copied from the tzdata package:

# Zone  NAME            GMTOFF  RULES   FORMAT  [UNTIL]
Zone    Asia/Kathmandu  5:41:16 -       LMT     1920
                        5:30    -       IST     1986
                        5:45    -       NPT     # Nepal Time

That means that on Jan 1 1986 the time from 00:00:00 to 00:14:59 is not valid. The following two commands show, that the first day of 1986 started with 00:15:00:

$ TZ=Asia/Kathmandu date -d '1985-12-31 23:59:59' '+%s'
504901799
$ TZ=Asia/Kathmandu date -d '1986-01-01 00:15:00' '+%s'
504901800

So the error message of date is correct. The date is invalid in this timezone. I am not sure what you are doing with the result of this command. However, you can try to use UTC because all dates are valid and unambiguous in UTC:

$ TZ=UTC date -d '1986-01-01'
Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 UTC 1986

Upvotes: 11

RBH
RBH

Reputation: 592

I think you are using alphabet "O" in upper case instead of number "0" in the command :)

Upvotes: 0

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