tag 15927 + moreinfo thanks Claudio Pinto wrote: > date --date=10/20/2013 > result in > date: invalid date `10/20/2013'
In what timezone? You didn't give your timezone therefore it is impossible to know for sure but your problem statement matches one of the very common cases where Daylight Saving Time changes and therefore creates an invalid date in your timezone. Since you don't specify a time the time of 00:00 implicit. Better to work with raw dates around 12:00 noon which avoids all known timezone DST changes. Using the raw 'date' output gives ambiguous timezones. Better to use the standardized and unambiguous -R format. $ date -R --date=10/20/2013 Sun, 20 Oct 2013 00:00:00 -0600 $ date -R --date="10/20/2013 12:00" Sun, 20 Oct 2013 12:00:00 -0600 Even better is to always do date calculations in UTC to avoid any DST problems entirely. $ date -u -R --date=10/20/2013 Sun, 20 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000 Please see the FAQ for a detailed discussion of date and DST. http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/#The-date-command-is-not-working-right_002e Bob
