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Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:25:04 -0500
From: Martin McCormick <martin@dc.cis.okstate.edu>
Subject: A question about the date Function
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	The man page on date has an example showing how to get
an output showing the number of seconds since the Epoch.

date -j -f "%a %b %d %T %Z %Y" "`date`" "+%s"

	There is an envokation of date embedded in this command
of

date +%s

I was curious as to what this command does so I tried the long
form and then the short form with:

date -j -f "%a %b %d %T %Z %Y" "`date`" "+%s" >f0
date +%s >f1

I then compared the outputs of f0 and f1 and they are identical.

	What does the long form of this command give us that
date +%s fails to do?

	Nothing is broken, here. I am just curious. Thank you.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Telecommunications Services Group