ensure variable has 2 chars 1

[kasparov]

I can think of a few ways to do this - but they are all long winded & can no doubt be improved on.

I need to set an environment variable to the number of the month before last. What I mean is that when I run my script in March I want $MONTH=01, in January $MONTH=11.

- date +%m gives me '03' for month,
- I can use expr to subtract 2, but this gives me '1' not '01' (& won't work in Jan or Feb anyway so I'd have to do something fancy for these months)
- I could use sed to prefix a '0' where required

As usual I'd be interested to hear what the experts suggest!

The usual thanks in advance ... Chris

 

[p5wizard]

typeset -Z2 MONTH

MONTH=2
echo $MONTH
02


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[p5wizard]

nothing fancy really:

typeset -Z2 MONTH
typeset -Z4 YEAR

MONTH=$(date +'%m')
YEAR=$(date +'%Y')

(( MONTH=MONTH-2 ))
if (( MONTH<1 ))
then
(( YEAR=YEAR-1 ))
(( MONTH=MONTH+12 ))
fi

echo $YEAR-$MONTH


HTH,

p5wizard

 

[kasparov]

Thanks p5wizard - that's neat enough for me!