Convert Date string in timestamp

Question

I can't find the right syntax to convert a string date in epoch timestamp.

The script is:

date -d '2012-03-02 22:00 EDT' +%s
DATEJ=`echo -n \'2012-03-02 22:00\'`
echo $DATEJ
date -d $DATEJ EDT +%s

and the result is

[gg@raspi8 ~]$ CNVDATTS
1330740000  
'2012-03-02 22:00'  
date: opérande supplémentaire « EDT »  
Saisissez « date --help » pour plus d'informations.  

Where is the fault?

It seems that the variable DATEJ does not give the same as the string in the 1st line. If I don't write EDT, the error is same but mention +%s.

Answer 1

The problem here seems to be with the single-quotes in $DATEJ. Your variable imposes them.

Change that to

DATEJ=`echo -n "2012-03-02 22:00"`

and in the final command:

date -d "$DATEJ EDT" +%s

This will work:

$ date -d '2012-03-02 22:00 EDT' +%s
1330740000
$ DATEJ=`echo -n "2012-03-02 22:00"`
$ echo $DATEJ
2012-03-02 22:00
$ date -d "$DATEJ EDT" +%s
1330740000

EDIT

Actually, you don't need to echo the date, unless your script imposes so, so the variable $DATEJ can simply be put as

DATEJ="2012-03-02 22:00"

Answer 2

Hopefully the following will help you or someone else looking for solution.

The date string can be of format mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss zzz or any equivalent. For ex: "06/10/2021 21:00:00 EST" or "06/10/2021 09:00:00 EST" TZ data is optional.

You can give the following command to get epoch timestamp:

date -d "06/10/2021 00:00:00 EST" +"%s"

OR

you can pass the string in a variable, for ex:

date_string="06/10/2021 00:00:00 EST"
date -d "$date_string" +"%s"

For your specific problem, following should work:

date -d '2012-03-02 22:00 EDT' +%s
DATEJ=`echo -n "2012-03-02 22:00"`
echo $DATEJ
date -d "$DATEJ EDT" +%s