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Is there a command-line tool to convert/format time? (I mean time, not date!)

Here is what I was expecting:

$ timeconverter --format '%s' 1h
3600
$ timeconverter --format '%h:%m:%s' 3665s
1:01:05
$ timeconverter --format '%H:%m:%s' 3665s
01:01:05
$ timeconverter --format '%Hh%Mm%Ss' 3966s
1h5m6s
$ timeconverter --format '%m' 2d
2880
$ timeconverter --format '%d' 1w
7
$ timeconverter --format '%y' 365d
1
$ timeconverter --format '%s' 1h10m
4200

Where %m is minute, %d is day, %y is year, %h is hour, %s is second, %w is week, and so on.

I myself could write a shell script for it, but it is very likely that someone else already did that, and I want to save my time.

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3 Answers 3

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6

You have the GNU software units (available as a package units in many Linux distributions).

Here is simple run to find out the number of days in 2 weeks:

$ units "2 week" day
* 14
/ 0.071428571

The manpage explains in full detail the input, output, exit code, and other ways to use the command.

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0
2

The GNU date command has most of what you seem to want. And you could define an alias to make the commands you want shorter.

For the examples below, I defined this alias for use in some of your examples:

alias timeconverter='date -u -d "1970-01-01 + '

So, using your original list, here are various possibilities (some also using units as suggested in the other answer)

$ timeconverter --format '%s' 1h
3600

$ date -u -d "1970-01-01 01:00" +%s
3600

$ date -u -d "1970-01-01 + 1 hour" +%s
3600

$ units -t "1 hour" seconds
3600

$ timeconverter 1 hour" +'%s'
3600


$ timeconverter --format '%h:%m:%s' 3665s
1:01:05

$ date -u -d "@3665" +'%-k:%M:%S'
1:01:05

$ units "3665 seconds" time
    1 hr + 1 min + 5 sec

$ timeconverter 3665 seconds" +'%-k:%M:%S'
1:01:05

$ timeconverter --format '%H:%m:%s' 3665s
01:01:05

$ date -u -d "@3665" +'%H:%M:%S'
01:01:05

$ date -u -d "@3665" +'%T'
01:01:05

$ date -u -d "1970-01-01 + 3665 sec" +'%H:%M:%S'
01:01:05

$ date -u -d "1970-01-01 + 3665 seconds" +'%H:%M:%S'
01:01:05

$ timeconverter 3665 seconds" +'%H:%M:%S'
01:01:05

$ timeconverter --format '%Hh%Mm%Ss' 3966s
1h5m6s

$ date -u -d "@3966" +'%-kh%-Mm%-Ss'
1h6m6s

$ timeconverter --format '%m' 2d
2880

$ echo $(( $(date -u -d "1970-01-01 + 2 days" +'%s') / 60 ))
2880

$ timeconverter --format '%d' 1w
7

$ echo $(( $(date -u -d "1970-01-01 + 1 week" +'%s') / 60 / 60 / 24 ))
7

$ timeconverter --format '%y' 365d
1

$ echo $(( $(date -u -d "1970-01-01 + 365 days" +'%Y') - 1970 ))
1

$ timeconverter --format '%s' 1h10m
4200

$ date -u -d "1970-01-01 + 1 hour 10 min" +'%s'
4200
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1

Don't think there's an established command line tool ready for that. The main reason might be that doing this might come with a plethora of pitfalls, due to human time not being very ... linear.

Example: you want to know the number of minutes in the next 2 years. That number depends on whether 2022 or 2023 are leap years.

If you really just want this with "standard" units (i.e. ignoring reality):

I probably wouldn't implement this as a shell script, but as a very minimal /usr/bin/env python3 -I -S script that converts the input argument to seconds, and then just uses passes the format string to the string formatting function after calculating the couple of integer divisions and modulos necessary for all potential fields you might want to output.

Anyways, let me repeat that: there are a few, but not very many, good reasons you might want to do this. Generally, conversion of time periods becomes hazardous if you don't know what the result will be used for; printing "your alarm clock will go off in 600 minutes" when in fact it goes off in 9hrs at 8am after the clock adjustment at daylight savings time is a bad idea.

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