Getting UNIX time from the shell

[Paul Houtz]

I'll just give you a hack I have to put the time and date in a non-24 hour
format into variables.   I do this so I can use them to create dated filenames.


#!/bin/ksh         
#		This is a korn shell script.
#		Define a function "clock" which returns the clock time 
#		in am or pm
clock () {
#		Put the time part of date into $CURTIME.  Could be done with 
#		cut too...
CURTIME=`date | awk '{print $4}'`
#		Use awk again to change 13:00 to 1:00 pm
print -n $CURTIME | awk 'BEGIN {FS = ":" }{if ($1 > 12) print $1-12 ":" $2 " pm" }{if ($1 <= 12) print $1 ":" $2 " am"}'
}
#		Okay, now you want to invoke the function to put readable time 
#		into $time
time=`clock`
#		Then use awk again to get the day month and year into a 
#		separate variable called $day
day=`date | awk '{print $1 " " $2 " " $3 }'`
#		Then print them both
print -n "$day  $time" 
#		end of script

This is an unnecessarily complicated way of doing what you want.  I have
it set up this way because I want those particular variables created.  However,
it should give you the idea!!

Substitue "echo" for "print" everywhere except inside the awk commands, and
change the function into a separate script or here document, and you will
have a bourne shell script that works to.

Hope this helps!
Paul Houtz
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