I had this working on Ubuntu but I'm now trying to run the script on OSX but it seems that the formatting of date is different.
Originally I had:
date -d "$MODDATE" +%F" "%H":"%M
where $MODDATE is a unix timestamp generated with stat
However the above date function doesn't work the same way on BSD versions. How can I convert the timestamp to the date in the following format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM ?
You can use the command:
$ date -jf "<input format>" "<input value>" +"<output format>"
For example:
$ date -jf "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M" "2011-11-13 08:11:02" +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"
2013-08-13 09:11
To generate a timestamp: date +%s.
And how to convert that timestamp?
Use the following:
date -jf "%s" "<timestamp value>" +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"
And with 1638449406 as timestamp:
date -jf "%s" "1638449406" +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"
it will print:
2021-12-02 13:50
Use the following:
date -ud @<timestamp value> +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"
Again, with 1638449406 as timestamp:
date -ud @1638449406 +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"
it will print:
2021-12-02 13:50
date -ud @1638449406 +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M" is the GNU syntax, not Unix syntax and would give you the UTC time, not local time for that Unix epoch time.
$MODDATE? There are plenty of differentstatcommands that can produce a variety of formats. If you can get it in number of seconds from the epoch, do that.