[linux] Using `date` command to get previous, current and next month

I am using below to get previous, current and the next month under Ubuntu 11.04:

LAST_MONTH=`date +'%m' -d 'last month'`
NEXT_MONTH=`date +'%m' -d 'next month'`
THIS_MONTH=`date +'%m' -d 'now'`

It works well until today, the last day of October, 2012 (2012-10-31)

I get below result as of now:

$ date
Wed Oct 31 15:35:26 PDT 2012
$ date +'%m' -d 'last month'
10
$ date +'%m' -d 'now'
10
$ $ date +'%m' -d 'next month'
12

I suppose the outputs should be 9,10,11 respectively.

Don't understand why date outputs behave like this. What should be a good way to get consistant previous, current and next month instead?

the main problem occur when you don't have date --date option available and you don't have permission to install it, then try below -

Previous month
#cal -3|awk 'NR==1{print toupper(substr($1,1,3))"-"$2}'
DEC-2016 
Current month
#cal -3|awk 'NR==1{print toupper(substr($3,1,3))"-"$4}'
JAN-2017
Next month
#cal -3|awk 'NR==1{print toupper(substr($5,1,3))"-"$6}'
FEB-2017

the following will do:

date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) -1 month" +%-m
date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) 0 month" +%-m
date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) 1 month" +%-m

or as you need:

LAST_MONTH=`date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) -1 month" +%-m`
NEXT_MONTH=`date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) 1 month" +%-m`
THIS_MONTH=`date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) 0 month" +%-m`

you asked for output like 9,10,11, so I used the %-m

%m (without -) will produce output like 09,... (leading zero)

this also works for more/less than 12 months:

date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) -13 month" +%-m

just try

date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) -13 month"

to see full result

If you happen to be using date in a MacOS environment, try this:

ST1:~ ejf$ date
Mon Feb 20 21:55:48 CST 2017
ST1:~ ejf$ date -v-1m +%m
01
ST1:~ ejf$ date -v+1m +%m
03

Also, I'd rather calculate the previous and next month on the first day of each month, this way you won't have issues with months ending the 30/31 or 28/29 (Feb/Feb leap year)