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The GNU implementation of the date command has a nice feature to show the date of the last modification of a reference file, and using the +FORMAT parameter it is easy to get the date in any format, for example:

date -r /etc/motd +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S
# output in the format: 20121001_171233

Is there an equivalent in Solaris? I know I can do it using the stat function of perl like this:

perl -mPOSIX -e 'print POSIX::strftime("%Y%m%d_%H%M%S\n", localtime((stat("/etc/motd"))[9]))'

But isn't there a more elegant way?

UPDATE

This gives the same output as the perl script and it's "easier" for me:

ls -Ego /etc/motd | awk '{print $4 "_" $5}' | tr -d :- | sed -e 's/\..*//'

And yeah, probably there's no more elegant solution.

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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

The inability of date to print anything but the current date is an oft-lamented defect. Some unices allow it to print other dates, but sadly for you not Solaris.

As long as you only need numerical output, you can parse the output of ls -Ego. The options -go suppres the user and group name, and -E is a Solaris-specific option to ls that makes it display the time in a parseable format. 

ls -Ego /path/to/file |
awk 'NR==1 {$0 = $4 "_" $5; gsub(/[-:]/,""); sub(/\..*/, ""); print}'

(This works with /usr/bin/ls but requires a POSIX-compliant awk, so make sure to have /usr/xpg4/bin or /usr/xpg6/bin ahead of /usr/bin on your PATH, or call nawk.)

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Nice, thanks! In your answer you are mentioning both -e and -E, that's a bit confusing. In the Solaris I have here (5.10) it works only with -E, and using nawk instead of awk. Actually this way is easier for me: ls -Ego /path/to/file | awk '{print $4 "_" $5}' | tr -d : | sed -e 's/\..*//' – janos Oct 15 '12 at 7:25
@janos I meant -E throughout. What's wrong with the awk code? I didn't think I'd used any feature that isn't supported by Solaris's /usr/bin/awk. – Gilles Oct 15 '12 at 8:55
the awk in this system here is /usr/bin/awk, but it doesn't have neither sub nor gsub and it also cannot assign values to $0. Definitely the most primitive awk I've ever seen. Bottom of man page: SunOS 5.10 Last change: 4 May 2010 – janos Oct 15 '12 at 9:09
up vote 2 down vote

I think that Perl is your best bet; I don't know of any useful date converter in Solaris, and date command only prints or sets current time.

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up vote 0 down vote

Well not exactly the format you want but how about

stat -c %y /etc/motd
=>
  2011-03-08 11:39:20.000000000 +0000

and then use whatever you prefer to bring that timestamp into shape.

Edit
I'm assuming OpenSolaris or Solaris 11 where the GNU version of stat is bundled.

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Is there a stat command in Solaris? Not that I know of. (* with exception of the ksh shell, where there is a shell builtin, I'm told) – January Oct 11 '12 at 20:20
There is a stat command in Solaris 11, but then if you have Solaris 11, there is also the simpler solution of just using /usr/gnu/bin/date. – alanc Oct 12 '12 at 3:10
I'm in Solaris 10. I found GNU date in /usr/local/bin/date. That's a good workaround, but it would be good to know another solution in case GNU date is not available. – janos Oct 12 '12 at 8:49

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