The reason date -h etc. doesn't work is because, as described, your Busybox was built with support for such disabled. You will need to talk to whoever maintains your Busybox package/install, or if that's you, then you need to consider tweaking the config further for such.
I have no problem with date on Busybox 1.25.0 with regards to most of your script's date syntaxes, as well as others shown in the syntax usage. First, your TODAY: root@gw:/tmp/home/root# date +"%Y-%m-%d" 2016-09-22 Now your tmpDays, but I'll use a different date than the above, to show it's working: root@gw:/tmp/home/root# date --date="2002-12-20" Fri Dec 20 00:00:00 PST 2002 root@gw:/tmp/home/root# date --date="2002-12-20" +%s 1040371200 Verifying that UNIX timestamp correlates with the correct date: root@gw:/tmp/home/root# perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1040371200), "\n";' Fri Dec 20 00:00:00 2002 In tmpDays, you use something called $birthdate, which uses variables that aren't defined (in the code you showed), so I can't tell if they're 2-digit years, 4-digit years, variable-width month values, or what, thus I cannot test that. The only two compile-time date tweaking options I see are CONFIG_FEATURE_DATE_ISOFMT and CONFIG_FEATURE_DATE_COMPAT, but I don't believe these are relevant: 33 //config:config FEATURE_DATE_ISOFMT 34 //config: bool "Enable ISO date format output (-I)" 35 //config: default y 36 //config: depends on DATE 37 //config: help 38 //config: Enable option (-I) to output an ISO-8601 compliant 39 //config: date/time string. 40 //config: 50 //config:config FEATURE_DATE_COMPAT 51 //config: bool "Support weird 'date MMDDhhmm[[YY]YY][.ss]' format" 52 //config: default y 53 //config: depends on DATE 54 //config: help 55 //config: System time can be set by 'date -s DATE' and simply 'date DATE', 56 //config: but formats of DATE string are different. 'date DATE' accepts 57 //config: a rather weird MMDDhhmm[[YY]YY][.ss] format with completely 58 //config: unnatural placement of year between minutes and seconds. 59 //config: date -s (and other commands like touch -d) use more sensible 60 //config: formats (for one, ISO format YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.ssssss). 61 //config: 62 //config: With this option off, 'date DATE' is 'date -s DATE' support 63 //config: the same format. With it on, 'date DATE' additionally supports 64 //config: MMDDhhmm[[YY]YY][.ss] format. That leaves reviewing changes between Busybox 1.24.2 and 1.25.0, so let's look at that, specifically looking for tags of 1_24_2 and 1_25_0: 1_25_stable: https://git.busybox.net/busybox/log/?h=1_25_stable 1_24_stable: https://git.busybox.net/busybox/log/?h=1_24_stable I see nothing in the 1_24_stable commit history, after 1_24_2, that indicates fixes/tweaks for date, so I don't have an immediate explanation. That said: is there a reason you're omitting depiction of the actual problem? You've given descriptions, but aren't pasting full terminal output. It would help because then one could reverse-engineer some of the messages shown back to code and see if the cause could be determined. -- | Jeremy Chadwick j...@koitsu.org | | UNIX Systems Administrator http://jdc.koitsu.org/ | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP 4BD6C0CB | On Thu, Sep 22, 2016 at 05:47:43PM -0500, ITwrx.org wrote: > On 09/22/2016 05:08 PM, Jeremy Chadwick wrote: > > Be sure to note that this is for 1.25.0; 1.24.2 may be different. > > I got this by using "date -h", but whether or not usage syntax is > > enabled depends on how your Busybox was built/configured. > > > > I believe the TIME format section should answer your question (you need > > to include hours and minutes, so try 00:00), ditto with -d/--date. > > > > > > BusyBox v1.25.0 (2016-09-09 15:02:42 ICT) multi-call binary. > > > > Usage: date [OPTIONS] [+FMT] [TIME] > > > > Display time (using +FMT), or set time > > > > [-s,--set] TIME Set time to TIME > > -u,--utc Work in UTC (don't convert to local time) > > -R,--rfc-2822 Output RFC-2822 compliant date string > > -I[SPEC] Output ISO-8601 compliant date string > > SPEC='date' (default) for date only, > > 'hours', 'minutes', or 'seconds' for date and > > time to the indicated precision > > -r,--reference FILE Display last modification time of FILE > > -d,--date TIME Display TIME, not 'now' > > -D FMT Use FMT for -d TIME conversion > > > > Recognized TIME formats: > > hh:mm[:ss] > > [YYYY.]MM.DD-hh:mm[:ss] > > YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm[:ss] > > [[[[[YY]YY]MM]DD]hh]mm[.ss] > > 'date TIME' form accepts MMDDhhmm[[YY]YY][.ss] instead > > > thanks for your help. "date -h" doesn't work on mine, nor "man date" or > "date --help". am i understanding you correctly that "-d" and "--date" > are supported > but if you don't give it the time format correctly it reports the error > erroneously by saying that the option itself is not supported when it > really is trying to report that the time format was invalid? > > > > -- > Information Technology Works > https://ITwrx.org > @ITwrxorg _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list busybox@busybox.net http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
