How to get 3 minutes future date?

Question

I want to get the date 3 minutes on the future. For example, if "now" is

01-Jan-70 00:00:00 GMT

I want to get

01-Jan-80 00:03:00 GMT

How should I do it? I'm working with busybox linux.

I like how it's 3 minutes and 10 years... subtle! – lornix Oct 15 '11 at 11:41 — lornix, Oct 15 '11 at 11:41

score 19 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 22 '13 at 17:45

19

With GNU date you can do it as simple as this:

date --date="3min"

But busybox seems not so smart (yet). The only reliable solution I came up with using bb is:

busybox date -D '%s' -d "$(( `busybox date +%s`+3*60 ))"

(you don't need the busybox parts if there is no other date implementation present)

If you want a formatted output, you could add this

busybox date -D '%s' +"%y%m%d%H%" -d "$(( `busybox date +%s`+3*60 ))"

edited Jul 22 '13 at 17:45

Anthon

answered Oct 14 '11 at 12:30

rozcietrzewiacz

I have not found why yet but this does not seem to be compatible with latest's alpine with busybox: `docker run -it alpine ash -c 'busybox date -D "%s" -d "$(( "$(busybox date +%s)"+3*60 ))"'` returns `date: invalid date '1617211960'` – hugoShaka Mar 31 '21 at 17:30
1

The correct syntax seems to be ```busybox date -d@"$(( `busybox date +%s`+3*60 ))" ``` – hugoShaka Mar 31 '21 at 18:34

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered May 09 '18 at 08:30

11

Working solution on alpine linux

date -d@"$(( `date +%s`+180))"

answered May 09 '18 at 08:30

Peder

2

Please elaborate about your command, as to how it works and such. Also, why does not the original solution work for you. – Vlastimil Burián May 09 '18 at 10:50

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 20 '14 at 11:43

1

I had to set the date for +2 hours on busybox OS on my router my command:

date "$(date +%m%d"$(( `date +%H`+2 ))"%M%Y.%S)"

answered Mar 20 '14 at 11:43

user63180

3 Answers3