How to convert DATE to UNIX TIMESTAMP in shell script on MacOS

Question

On Linux you can convert a date like  2010-10-02  to a unix timestamp in shell script by  date -d  2010-10-02     s    Since Mac OS does not have the equivalent -d for date  How do you go about converting a date to a unix timestamp in a shell script

User · Accepted Answer

man date on OSX has this example  date -j -f   a  b  d  T  Z  Y    date      s    Which I think does what you want    You can use this for a specific date  date -j -f   a  b  d  T  Z  Y   Tue Sep 28 19 35 15 EDT 2010     s    Or use whatever format you want

User · Answer

I wrote a set of scripts that provides a uniform interface for both BSD and GNU version of date  Follow command will output the Epoch seconds for the date 2010-10-02  and it works with both BSD and GNU version of date    xsh  date convert  quot 2010-10-02 quot   quot   s quot  1286020263  It s an equivalent of the command with GNU version of date  date -d  quot 2010-10-02 quot   quot   s quot   and also the command with BSD version of date  date -j -f  quot  F quot  2010-10-02  quot   s quot   The scripts can be found at   https   github com xsh-lib core tree master functions date  It s a part of a library called xsh-lib core  To use them you need both repos xsh and xsh-lib core  I list them below   https   github com alexzhangs xsh https   github com xsh-lib core

User · Answer

I used the following on Mac OSX    currDate  date   Y m d  epochDate   date -j -f   Y m d     currDate      s

User · Answer

Alternatively you can install GNU date like so    install Homebrew  https   brew sh  brew install coreutils add to your bash profile  alias date   usr local bin gdate  date   s 1547838127   Comments saying Mac has to be  different  simply reveal the commenter is ignorant of the history of UNIX  macOS is based on BSD UNIX  which is way older than Linux  Linux essentially was a copy of other UNIX systems  and Linux decided to be  different  by adopting GNU tools instead of BSD tools  GNU tools are more user friendly  but they re not usually found on any  BSD system  just the way it is    Really  if you spend most of your time in Linux  but have a Mac desktop  you probably want to make the Mac work like Linux   There s no sense in trying to remember two different sets of options  or scripting for the mac s BSD version of Bash  unless you are writing a utility that you want to run on both BSD and GNU Linux  shells

User · Answer

date   s   This works fine for me on OS X Lion

User · Answer

date -j -f   Y- m- d  H  M  S   2020-04-07 00 00 00     s   It will print the dynamic seconds when without  H  M  S and 00 00 00

User · Answer

date -j -f   Y- m- d   2010-10-02     s

[linux] How to convert DATE to UNIX TIMESTAMP in shell script on MacOS

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