Thanks all you folks! The missing piece of information, as guessed by Paul Eggert: TZ=America/Sao_Paulo (Brazil/East).
All commands from the report were executed a few hours before reporting,so it was Oct,15... a few days from entering Daylight Saving time. Tried all your suggestions they work: > date +%Y --date='20101017' date: invalid date `20101017' > date +%Y --date='20101017 12:00' 2010 > date +%Y --date='20101017 -Z' 2010 > date +%Y --date='20101017 +Z' 2010 > date --version date (GNU coreutils) 6.11 And thanks for pointing the FAQ, Eric and Bob!! -> Shame on me... next time I should try a bit harder on my searching arguments. =]
