[Solved] Still learning and stuck with 'date'

Question

Hi there, I thought it was about time I learned the fine art of shell scripting, but as the title states, I'm stuck.
A file with some text, one of which is this:
Download time: September 8 12:17:37
This I need to grap and convert to a computer readable format, so that I may compare it with another.
This shouldn't be too hard:
cat ~/unitinfo.txt | grep 'Download time: ' | cut -c16- | xargs date +"%B %-d %T" -d
But, when I execute this above, I get the error:
date: extra operand '8'
I've tried various variations, but nothing seems to make a difference, all thought the format is a perfect match when I get 'date' to print it.
Please advice and best regards.
Last edited by zacariaz (2012-09-09 10:17:14)

Answer 1

Just for the fun of it, if you care to comment on my progress so far:
unitinfo.txt:
Current Work Unit
Name: Gromacs
Tag: -
Download time: September 8 12:17:37
Due time: September 12 12:17:37
Progress: 25% [||________]
fah.sh:
#!/bin/bash
dueTime="$(date +%s -d "$(grep 'Due time: ' ~/unitinfo.txt | cut -c11-)")"
downloadTime="$(date +%s -d "$(grep 'Download time: ' ~/unitinfo.txt | cut -c16-)")"
currentTime="$(date +%s)"
progress="$(grep 'Progress: ' ~/unitinfo.txt | cut -c11-c12 | sed 's/ *$//')"
Now that I look at it again, am I correct that
sed 's/ *$//'
might as well be
sed 's/ $//'
In any case, there a long way to go.
Last edited by zacariaz (2012-09-09 22:20:45)