Patrick Nagelschmidt wrote: > The script below fails on my box with the following output: > > 1197676800 > date: invalid date `1970-01-01 \033[?1034h1197676800 sec' > > So for some reason the value passed to date got a nasty prefix.
I cannot recreate the problem. However I think your issue is because you are forcing bc into interactive mode. > #!/bin/bash > let "STEP=86400" > let "CALCTIME=`date +%s`" > export DAYSTART=`echo "$CALCTIME - ($CALCTIME % $STEP) - $STEP" |bc > -i |tail -1` Remove the -i option from bc and see if that solves your problem. My version of bc does not produce escape sequences but it appears that yours does. You don't want to run bc in interactive mode here regardless. > echo "$DAYSTART" > export BASHBUG=`date -d "1970-01-01 $DAYSTART sec" +"%Y-%m-%d %T"` > > Fix: > Yes, please ;) But I don't think this has anything to do with bash. It is a bc / scripting problem. As a hint I would remove the pipe to bc and simply let bash do the math here. Try this instead. #!/bin/bash let "STEP=86400" let "CALCTIME=`date +%s`" export DAYSTART=$(($CALCTIME - ($CALCTIME % $STEP) - $STEP)) echo "$DAYSTART" export BASHBUG=`date -d "1970-01-01 $DAYSTART sec" +"%Y-%m-%d %T"` Also if you have a new enough version of coreutils then date can be simplified too. export BASHBUG=`date -d "1970-01-01 $DAYSTART sec" +"%Y-%m-%d %T"` Plus +%F is a more compact date string. export BASHBUG=`date -d "1970-01-01 $DAYSTART sec" +"%F %T"` A fully updated script. It only uses standard features and could use the start #!/bin/sh okay too. #!/bin/bash STEP=86400 CALCTIME=$(date +%s) export DAYSTART=$(($CALCTIME - ($CALCTIME % $STEP) - $STEP)) echo "$DAYSTART" export BASHBUG=$(date -d "@$DAYSTART" +"%Y-%m-%d %T") echo "$BASHBUG" exit 0 Bob
