Wrong parsing command from date manpage

command lineterminaltime

In the Apple's date manpage ($ man date) it's written:

Finally the command:

     `date -j -f "%a %b %d %T %Z %Y" "`date`" "+%s"

can be used to parse the output from date and express it in Epoch time.

But when I'm executing this command ($ date -j -f "%a %b %d %T %Z %Y" "`date`" "+%s") in a new Basic Shell from Terminal I get:

Failed conversion of ``Ven 12 mai 2017 08:22:03 CEST'' using format ``%a %b %d %T %Z %Y''
date: illegal time format
usage: date [-jnRu] [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t west] [-v[+|-]val[ymwdHMS]] ... 
            [-f fmt date | [[[mm]dd]HH]MM[[cc]yy][.ss]] [+format]

Why? Does it same for you? How can I correct it?

NB: I'm on macOS Sierra 10.12.4 with French settings and Paris local time (UTC +02:00)

Best Answer

You are using the following date format:

 %a %d  %b   %Y %H:%M:%S   %Z
Ven 12 mai 2017 08:22:03 CEST

So the correct command is

date -j -f "%a %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z" "`date`" "+%s"
Related Question