If the option -d works in your system, here's another way to do it. There is a caveat that it wouldn't account for leap years since I've considered 365 days per year.
date1yrs=`date -d "20100209" +%Y`
date1days=`date -d "20100209" +%j`
date2yrs=`date +%Y`
date2days=`date +%j`
diffyr=`expr $date2yrs - $date1yrs`
diffyr2days=`expr $diffyr \* 365`
diffdays=`expr $date2days - $date1days`
echo `expr $diffyr2days + $diffdays`