Convert an ISO date to seconds since epoch in linu

Question

I have a date in the ISO format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:SS (e.g. 2014-02-14T12:30). I'd like to convert it in seconds since epoch using only the date command in linux bash.

All the dates refer to UTC locale.

I know that this question is easily eligible for duplicate... there are billions of questions about converting dates from one format to another but I can't find my particular scenario

thank you...

Answer 1

It is easier if you install gdate to deal with date strings that have timezones with nano second precision

install coreutils and you will get gdate along

on mac brew install coreutils

gdate --date="2010-10-02T09:35:58.203Z" +%s%N

This is particularly useful when inserting the time series value into influxdb

in a shell script variable = $(gdate --date="2010-10-02T09:35:58.203Z" +%s%N)

echo $variable

Answer 2

With GNU date, specify the date to parse with -d and seconds since epoch with %s

$ date -d"2014-02-14T12:30" +%s
1392381000