Re: date does not support pipes

[Philip Rogers]

Hello,

Thanks for the reply.

1. Other utils do not require `-` to be specified, do they? For example, 
the manpage for sed says:

> if no input files are specified, then the standard input is read.

Why date requires it?

2. In any case, I think it should be documented to pass `-` to read from 
stdin

3. The command `stat --format "%Y" check.txt | date -f-` does not work. 
It returns:

> date: invalid date ‘1705140089’

It looks like the -f command requires human-readable date, and won't 
work with seconds since the epoch

4. On a related note, the man page I think should also document the use 
of `@` for seconds since the epoch.

It provides an example:

> Convert seconds since the Epoch (1970-01-01 UTC) to a date
>
> $ date --date='@2147483647'

But `@` per-se is not documented.

Thanks again and best regards,
Philips

On 13/01/2024 10.43, Marc Chantreux wrote:
> hello,
>
> On Sat, Jan 13, 2024 at 05:14:25AM +0100, Philip Rogers wrote:
>
> > Would it be possible to implement reading from stdin in date?
> already exists:
>
>         stat --format "%Y" check.txt | date -f-
>
> regards
> marc