[CentOS] Trouble using date function in centos

Sat Oct 4 20:01:00 UTC 2008
Stephen Harris <lists at spuddy.org>

On Sat, Oct 04, 2008 at 09:48:28PM +0200, Thomas Johansson wrote:
> Is there someone that can explain why I get incorrect results on centos 
> 4.6 and 4.7 but not on centos 5.2??

> test000:/% date -d "2008-10-25 +1 days" "+%Y-%m-%d"
> 2008-10-26
> test000:/% date -d "2008-10-26 +1 days" "+%Y-%m-%d"
> 2008-10-26


My initial immediate guess would be daylight savings related; if in
your timezone the clock goes back on the 26th then 2008-10-26 (which
means 00:00) + 24 hours would only be 2008-10-26 23:00.

You can see this if you don't specify the format string

  centos4.7$ date -d "2008-11-01 +1 days"
  Sun Nov  2 00:00:00 EDT 2008
  centos4.7$ date -d "2008-11-02 +1 days"
  Sun Nov  2 23:00:00 EST 2008

However, in Centos5.2...

  centos5.2$ date -d "2008-11-01 +1 days"
  Sun Nov  2 00:00:00 EDT 2008
  centos5.2$ date -d "2008-11-02 +1 days"
  Mon Nov  3 00:00:00 EST 2008

Why the difference in behaviour, I dunno.  But if this _IS_ your problem
then you can specify 4am as the time to add 1 day to.

  centos4.7$ date -d "2008-11-01 04:00 +1 days" "+%Y-%m-%d"
  2008-11-02
  centos4.7$ date -d "2008-11-02 04:00 +1 days" "+%Y-%m-%d"
  2008-11-03

That'll work on both :-)

-- 

rgds
Stephen