Obtaining timestamp 2

[sandeepmur]

Hi,

How can I obtain the current TIMESTAMP in HP-UX ? man data doesnt give any info on this..

thnx,

 

[PHV]

Something like this ?
date '+%Y-%m-%d %T'

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[sandeepmur]

But this gives the date-time.. (2005-04-04 11:41:23). I want the timestamp .. something like '1112612700'.

thnx

 

[hoinz]

Hi,

I presume 'timestamp' means 'seconds since 1 Jan 1970' ?
Sorry, I don't know a pure Unix way to get it. Perhaps somebody else does?
I only know of a way to do it in a C program. It requires some understanding of structs. (I haven't a code example though.)
How good is your C?

 

[hoinz]

or Perl:

perl -w
print time

 

[sandeepmur]

hmm.. strange that Unix doesnt have any command to obtain the Timestamp

My objective is the following:

I want to execute a script only if it is 30 minutes older/ later than the last time it was executed.

How can I accomplish this ? I thought of using timestamps but.....

thnx

 

[hoinz]

the first idea:
use cron to run it every 30 minutes?

 

[sandeepmur]

nope.. cant use cron because of further validations I hv to perform.. it has to be 30 minutes after every execution and not every 30 minutes..

hv very little knowledge of perl.. how do I use the above perl code ?

thnx

 

[sandeepmur]

got it..

perl -e 'print time . "\n"' give the reqd timestamp..

thnx

 

[Chacalinc]

write a perl script and save it in /usr/local/bin

timestamp (file)
------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl
print time . "\n"
----------------------

chmod 777 /usr/bin/timestamp

Cheers.

 

[PHV]

You may also consider at now +30 minutes

Hope This Helps, PH.
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[sandeepmur]

another question...

Can I store the output of the perl command into a variable for further manipulation ??

something like

TEMPVAL = perl -e 'print time'

if TEMPVAL -gt 300 .........

I tried the above but its not working..
thnx,

 

[PHV]

In ksh-like:
TEMPVAL=$(perl -e 'print time')
In traditional bourne-shell:
TEMPVAL=`perl -e 'print time'`


Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[sandeepmur]

Thnx !!

 

[sandeepmur]

one last question..

how do I capture the output of another file into a variable ?

something like

OLDVAL = cat tempData

which is not working

thnx again

 

[PHV]

In ksh-like:
OLDVAL=$(<tempData)
In traditional bourne-shell:
OLDVAL=`cat tempData`

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[sandeepmur]

Hello again,

I have a urgent question and hope someone here can help me..

perl -e 'print time' in HP-UX gives me the fwg TIMESTAMP '1112778096' which corresponds to 'Wed, 6 Apr 2005 09:01:36 UTC'

At the sametime, command DATE gives me the date as 'Wed Apr 6 10:02:05 PST 2005'

Which of the above 2 is correct ? and why ?

thanks,

 

[hoinz]

Maybe both are correct.
UTC aka GMT is Unix standard time.
The other must be your local time. What is the output of 'echo $TZ'? Which time zone do you live in? I presume PST, in this case, does not mean 'Pacific Standard Time'?
hope this helps

 

[Mike042]

I suspect that technically both are correct. The problem is how the data is interpreted. The number of seconds since 1 Jan 1970 doesn't take into account "Timezones" or "British Summer Time" etc, whereas the date command does.

Could I suggest using the command:
timestamp=`date +'%Y%m%d%H%M%S'`
(produces for example 20050406102521 at 10:25 [21 secs] on 06 Apr 2005)

I hope that helps.

Mike

 

[sandeepmur]

'echo $TZ' returns PWT0PST, so as hoinz said, it appears to be Pacific Standard Time.

Basically what I need to know is, is this a cause for worry.. The machine is our Production machine and a lapse of 1 hour can cause untold problems..

I just want to be assured that the date used is the one thats obtained from the DATE command and not the TIMESTAMP. I am in Lisbon (local time = GMT). I figure the TIMESTAMP obtained doesnt take into account the DST observed here..

thnx