/ David Champion wrote on Fri 9.Nov'12 at 15:00:44 -0600 /
> * On 09 Nov 2012, Jeremy Kitchen wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 09, 2012 at 11:12:34AM +0000, Jamie Paul Griffin wrote:
> > > Hi
> > >
> > > I would like to use the method of setting messages to expire described
> > > on Gary's page[1] but the problem is that this script uses gnu date(1)
> > > and I have BSD date(1).
> >
> > there's no compatible option with bsd `date`?
> >
> > You could also replace the call to `date` with a $SCRIPTING_LANGUAGE
> > script (perl would probably work pretty well for this, and I believe
> > perl is pretty standard on the BSDs) which does the same thing. All it's
> > doing with GNU `date` is spitting out an RFC822 formatted `date`, which
> > I would think BSD `date` is capable of doing, but a simple perl script
> > would definitely be able to.
>
> The greater problem in Gary's script for Jamie is not printing an RFC822
> date (there is no one-shot option, but the formatters are all there),
> but parsing date/time from natural language, which GNU date's '-d' does.
>
> Python option:
> $ easy_install parsedatetime
> $ python
> >>> from parsedatetime.parsedatetime import Calendar
> >>> import time
> >>> rfc822format = '%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S -0000'
> >>> c = Calendar()
> >>> st, flag = c.parse('next Monday at 2pm')
> >>> t = time.mktime(st)
> >>> tm = time.gmtime(t)
> >>> time.strftime(rfc822format, tm)
> 'Mon, 12 Nov 2012 20:00:00 -0000'
>
> parsedatetime doesn't know anything about timezones, so the mktime and
> gmtime are just to adapt the struct_time value from c.parse() from local
> time to GMT, so that the RFC822 address can assume it. This lets the
> script work for anyone, without needing to calculate a zone offset for
> your locale.
Hi David, et al
I wondered if you would mind showing me how I could use your python code above
to implement it into Gary's idea for creating the mail Expiry date macro?
I am a total python beginner and so can't quite make sense of what i need to do
to achieve what i need.
Best wishes, Jamie.
