GNU bug report logs - #71986
RFC: date @ to support ms.

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Richard Neill <rn214 <at> cam.ac.uk>
To: bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org
Subject: RFC: date @ to support ms.
Date: Sun, 7 Jul 2024 20:46:45 +0100

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='@1720378861.258'

Perhaps one of these syntaxes might be suitable?

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

Thanks very much,

Richard

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