6 Replies Latest reply on Apr 20, 2012 12:50 PM by Bill Robinson

    Epoch time in NSH

    Alexandru Ghionghios Apr 18, 2012 11:12 AM

      Hi there,

       

      I want to get the current standard epoch time (seconds from 1970) in a nsh script. Is there any way to do that as date +%s is not working in nsh? Or maybe you have an ideea of how can I convert something like this 2012-04-18-17-09-25 to epoch time in nsh.

       

      Thanks,

       

      Alex

        • 1. Re: Epoch time in NSH
          Bill Robinson
          Bill Robinson Moderator Apr 18, 2012 11:15 AM (in response to Alexandru Ghionghios)

          Modload zsh/datetime

          Use strftime.

           

          You need to be using n/zsh 4.3.4

          • 2. Re: Epoch time in NSH
            Wenchi Liao
            Wenchi Liao Employee Apr 18, 2012 1:37 PM (in response to Bill Robinson)

            if the datetime module is there, EPOCHSECONDS will be the current time as well:

             

            $ echo $EPOCHSECONDS

            1334773831

            $

             

            If the newer zsh isn't available, awk can generate it as well:

             

            $ echo $EPOCHSECONDS

            1334774032

            $ echo "" | awk 'END {print srand()}'

            1334774034

            $

            • 3. Re: Epoch time in NSH
              Bill Robinson
              Bill Robinson Moderator Apr 18, 2012 1:39 PM (in response to Wenchi Liao)

              Are you using the nsh awk or the system awk?

              • 4. Re: Epoch time in NSH
                Wenchi Liao
                Wenchi Liao Employee Apr 18, 2012 5:39 PM (in response to Bill Robinson)

                It shouldn't matter. awk should have the srand() function, and that's what makes this work. With no arguments, srand() will return the current time in seconds.

                 

                playing around with this a bit more. It seems gnu awk always (some versions?) implicitly seed to 1, so gawk may need srand twice:

                 

                $ echo "" | gawk 'END{print srand()}'

                1

                $ echo "" | gawk 'END{print srand()}'

                1

                $ echo "" | gawk 'END{srand(); print srand()}'

                1334788707

                echo "" | gawk 'END{srand(); print srand()}'

                1334788708

                 

                nsh awk only needs one... eh..

                • 5. Re: Epoch time in NSH
                  Alexandru Ghionghios Apr 19, 2012 10:31 AM (in response to Alexandru Ghionghios)

                  Thanks for your answers.

                   

                  I am using nsh's awk. I am able to do it this way, as you suggested:

                   

                  echo "" | awk 'END {print srand()}'

                   

                  Meantime, I found perl on the application server so I was able to do it using perl:

                   

                  perl -e "print time"

                   

                  I cannot update nsh to a newer version. This is the version I got: BladeLogic Network Shell 8.0.7.731. Don't have gawk ar nawk...

                   

                   

                  Thanks a lot for your help!!

                   

                  Regards,

                   

                  Alex

                  • 6. Re: Epoch time in NSH
                    Bill Robinson
                    Bill Robinson Moderator Apr 20, 2012 12:50 PM (in response to Alexandru Ghionghios)

                    You can update nsh – actually zsh.

                     

                    To check the version run:

                    Nsh –version

                    That will show like:

                    $ nsh --version

                    zsh 4.3.4 (i686-pc-linux-gnu)

                     

                    if it’s 4.0.4 you can goto the NSH/bin directory and change the nsh symlink to point to the zsh-4_3_4 binary instead of zsh.  4.3.4 is the default for bsa 8.1+ and it works fine in older versions for the most part.

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