date and printf commands

[David Venus]

Hi!

I have some enhancement suggestions for the date and printf commands.

DATE:

1) Be able to supply the date string as 20091222 instead of 2009-12-22.
Even better would be the ability to input formats and output formats. This
would get around this issue in both directions.
    Also see #4 below. Almost like the Oracle to_date function that takes a
date string and a format and turns it into an internal date. For example:
to_date('12-12-09', 'MM-DD-YY') of course the
    format would use gnu date formats like %Y or %m, etc. I can see this
looking like: date -d '12-12-09, +%m-%d-%Y' -f '+7 days' -o '+%Y%m%d'.

2) Be able to say things like "fist day of year" (20090101), "week"
(20091220), "month" (20091201), etc.

3) Be able to say things like "last day of year" (20091231), "week"
(20091226), "month" (20091231), etc.

4) Separate the date string from the operation, even if it means more flags
/ options.

PRINTF:

1) I would love a way to force grouping and decimal place regardless of the
locale (LC_*, LANG) settings. Could be an environment variable or command
line flag, etc. I guess what I am looking
     for is a way to specify the information in the locale file my self to
the command so that a number like 123456 and a format of 0.2 comes out as
1,234.56 not 123456.00! Now maybe there would need
     to be other punctuation in there - that would be OK.

I appreciate your consideration of these items. Please let me know if I
have not explained them well or you need more info, etc.

Thanks for your time, help and patience!


Dave Venus
Lead DBA


address@hidden


864-254-1045


Bi-Lo, LLC.
208 Bi-Lo Blvd.
Greenville, SC. 29607