tar: Date input formats
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1 7 Date input formats
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1
1 First, a quote:
1
1 Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months,
1 are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make
1 coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had
1 some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time, to make
1 it all but impossible for us to escape subjection to sodden
1 routines and unpleasant surprises, he could hardly have done better
1 than handing down our present system. It is like a set of
1 trapezoidal building blocks, with no vertical or horizontal
1 surfaces, like a language in which the simplest thought demands
1 ornate constructions, useless particles and lengthy
1 circumlocutions. Unlike the more successful patterns of language
1 and science, which enable us to face experience boldly or at least
1 level-headedly, our system of temporal calculation silently and
1 persistently encourages our terror of time.
1
1 ... It is as though architects had to measure length in feet, width
1 in meters and height in ells; as though basic instruction manuals
1 demanded a knowledge of five different languages. It is no wonder
1 then that we often look into our own immediate past or future, last
1 Tuesday or a week from Sunday, with feelings of helpless confusion.
1 ...
1
1 --Robert Grudin, 'Time and the Art of Living'.
1
1 This section describes the textual date representations that GNU
1 programs accept. These are the strings you, as a user, can supply as
1 arguments to the various programs. The C interface (via the
1 'parse_datetime' function) is not described here.
1
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