We can use date -d option
1) Change format to "%Y-%m-%d" format i.e 20121212 to 2012-12-12
date -d '20121212' +'%Y-%m-%d'
2)Get next or last day from a given date=20121212. Like get a date 7 days in past with specific format
date -d '20121212 -7 days' +'%Y-%m-%d'
3) If we are getting date in some variable say dat
dat2=$(date -d "$dat -1 days" +'%Y%m%d')
date only work with GNU date (usually comes with Linux)
for OS X, two choices:
change command (verified)
#!/bin/sh #DATE=20090801204150 #date -jf "%Y%m%d%H%M%S" $DATE "+date \"%A,%_d %B %Y %H:%M:%S\"" date "Saturday, 1 August 2009 20:41:50"
http://www.unix.com/shell-programming-and-scripting/116310-date-conversion.html
Download the GNU Utilities from Coreutils - GNU core utilities (not verified yet) http://www.unix.com/emergency-unix-and-linux-support/199565-convert-string-date-add-1-a.html
just use the -d option of the date command, e.g.
date -d '20121212' +'%Y %m'
Source: Stackoverflow.com