Subject: RFC: date @ to support ms.
From: Richard Neill <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2024 20:46:45 +0100
List-Id: <debbugs-submit.debbugs.gnu.org>

Hello,

I've noticed a lot of systems now return the timestamp in milliseconds 
since the epoch, rather than seconds. This means that e.g.

   date --date='@1720378861258'

will do something rather unexpected!

May I suggest that it would be nice if date had an input format that 
would let me specify that the value is in ms?

I know we can bodge it with bc, or by injecting the decimal, or trimming 
off the last 3 chars, but that seems inelegant, and requires extra 
thinking (and hence bugs) from the programmer.
   date --date=[email-masked]'

Perhaps one of these syntaxes might be suitable?

  date --date='@ms1720378861258'
  date --date='@@1720378861258'
  date --epoch-ms --date='@1720378861258'

Thanks very much,

Richard