On Sun, Nov 13, 2005 at 10:33:15AM -0800, Debian Bug Tracking System wrote:
> There is quite a bit of language about unix times in the info docs. The
> date command is complicated enough that you pretty much can't avoid
> reading the full info about it; I don't see a practical way of adding
> all the nifty features onto the manpage and still have it readable.
>
> FYI, date currently supports date -d '@1123341579' to avoid the date -d
> '01/01/1970 1123341579 seconds GMT' construct.
I don't think that one more one-line example would make the manpage
unreadable.
Actually, where did the examples go in the original manpage? There are
examples in the italian translation, but not in the LANG=C one.
If the main information is kept on info, then the manpage could really
be made into a quick-reference sheet. No explanations (refers to Info
for that) and quick summary of commandline options and format sequences
(as we have now), plus a bunch of one-line useful examples.
I'm personally a fan of collecting examples, and I find manpages with
examples so much more useful than manpages with just lengthy
explanations. Best effects are acheived if useful ones are collected
over time.
Here's my previous patch to add an EXAMPLES section, integrated with the
examples recovered from the (old?) Italian translation and retranslated:
--- date.1 2005-08-06 17:32:59.000000000 +0200
+++ date.1.enrico 2005-08-06 17:34:59.720187776 +0200
@@ -178,6 +178,14 @@
.IP
`-' (hyphen) do not pad the field
`_' (underscore) pad the field with spaces
+.SH EXAMPLES
+.nf
+ # Print the date of two days ago
+ date --date ´2 days ago´
+
+ # Print the name of the weekday of Christmas in this year
+ date --date ´25 Dec´ +%j
+
+ # Print the current day in a format that includes the complete name of the
+ # month, and the weekday
+ date ´+%B %d´
+
+ # Print the same, without the padding with zeros ("1" instead of "01")
+ date -d 1-may ´+%B %-d´
+
+ # Print the current date as unix timestamp
+ date +%s
+
+ # Parse a unix timestamp
+ date -d "@1123341579"
+.fi
.SH AUTHOR
Written by David MacKenzie.
.SH "REPORTING BUGS"
Do what you want with it: I'm not reopening the bug and I won't insist
more than this.
Ciao,
Enrico
--
GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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