Why date '+%s%N' not working on mac terminal? - bash

I am working on bash scripts on both linux and mac.
I run this command on remote server with linux OS and it just work perfect.
CURRENT_TIME=$(date '+%s%N')
echo "$CURRENT_TIME"
However, when I run the same command on mac terminal, it shows this error:
1654778186N: value too great for base (error token is "1654778186N")
It look like mac terminal did not recognized the '%N'. What should I do to fix the issue on mac terminal?

%N is a GNU extension to the POSIX standard, as clarified in GNU's own documentation: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Time-conversion-specifiers.html
The POSIX version of date, doesn't include %N: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/date.html
If I recall correctly, POSIX-certified systems (and macOS is certified) cannot add custom extensions to POSIX tools to guarantee portability across systems.

Related

date -R in El Capitan

I'm trying to include a date flag "date -R" in a bash script to use RFC 2822 and the script works fine in macOS 10.12 but not in Mac OS X 10.11. I get an illegal option.
I checked the man pages for date and the date -R flag seems to be available in 10.12 but not in 10.11 even though both systems are running the same version of bash.
Any idea of why there would be a difference or any work arounds? We're testing -u to use a universal time code but my main concern is non-english unicode characters.
We're trying to to convert non-English Unicode characters in CSV files and timestamps keep showing up as issues.

Running Octave-cli on Iterm/Zsh/Omgzsh in Mac OSX

It feels impossible to get it to run on any custom terminal. I know that octave-cli.app is there but it always opens in the standard terminal. Any ways to execute octave scripts like a compiler (or) run it interactively like an interpreter from Iterm?
Using Mac OSX 10.9+
Edit:
I know how to export path variables. But having searched the web can't find a way to do it. Is it even possible? I even tried it using homebrew to no avail.
You can see the content of octave-cli.app, it's a script. Mine goes like this
open -a Terminal.app /usr/local/octave/3.8.0/bin/octave | logger 2>&1
It specify the terminal application used to open octave. This is the reason of your problem, as I think.
The solution is linking octave-cli in system path, better locates at "/usr/local/bin". like
ln -s /usr/local/octave/3.8.0/bin/octave-cli /usr/local/bin/octave-cli
Finally, octave can be accessed via any terminal(like iTerm) or shell(bash, zsh) by just type "octave-cli" command, which will be searched in system path and found to executed directly.

Is setsid command missing on OS X?

I mean I can't use it in bash, is it not available on OS X, or is it just missing on my Mac?
It's not a PATH variable issue, because I searched with find command, and there's no file named setsid on my Mac at all.
If it's missing on OS X, is there any alternative to it?
Or if it's the case that I somehow deleted it accidentally, where can I find a copy of it?
use Brew:
brew install util-linux
Yes. /usr/bin/setsid is missing on Mac OS/X.
The OS interface is available, so based on the chapter 2 man page there may be some hope for porting the Linux source to Darwin.
While macOS does not come with a setsid command, it does come with scripting languages which support calling the setsid C function, such as Perl and Python. So, if you don't want to (or for some reason can't) install a setsid command via Homebrew (or MacPorts or whatever), another option is to write your own in a scripting language. As an example, try this Perl script (which I based off this with some minor changes):
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use POSIX qw(setsid);
fork() && exit(0);
setsid() or die "setsid failed: $!";
exec #ARGV;
If you don't like Perl, Python's os module has a setsid function too.
A simple demo, which relies on the fact that /dev/tty is an alias of your controlling terminal if you have one, but reads/writes to it fail with an IO error if you don't:
$ bash -c 'echo I have a controlling terminal. > /dev/tty'
I have a controlling terminal.
$ ./setsid.pl bash -c 'echo I have a controlling terminal. > /dev/tty'
bash: /dev/tty: Device not configured
$
(Warning: With the release of macOS Catalina (10.15) in 2019, Apple deprecated the Perl, Python, Ruby and Tcl language runtimes shipped with macOS – they say new software should not use them, and they may be removed in a future macOS version – and Apple is not going to update their versions, which are becoming increasingly outdated. However, they are still there in Monterey, and while I haven't upgraded to Ventura yet, I haven't heard anything about their removal in that version either. One obviously shouldn't rely on them for any supported applications – if such software needs one of these runtimes, it should install its own copy of them. However, if it is just for a quick hacky script to easily test how some program behaves without a controlling terminal, using these OS-bundled runtimes is still fine.)

Is Cmd Prompt the same as Ubuntu Terminal?

I'm sorry if this is a simple question:
I want to swap from ubuntu to windows for my web dev (personal preference). I'm used to using the terminal in ubuntu and the commands there and I was wondering whether the command prompt in windows is the same? Do the commands do the same?
If not, is there a way to get a terminal for windows the same as ubuntu?
No the Command prompt is not same as the Linux shell you may find some commands resembling to those of the shell in Linux (terminal) however to get a more Linux shell like environment you can install cygwin or GOW (Gnu on Windows). It will give you a bash.
You can find Cygwin here . and
You can find GOW here .
Its not the same, as others have answered, but since the latest version of windows 10 there is a way of running linux bash terminal in Windows.
Have a look in Bash on Windows.
It is actually running Ubuntu inside your Windows.
Windows is based on DOS but Ubuntu is based on Linux. Each of those has its own commands, with some similar commands. I personally prefer Linux commands as they are easier to understand and more simple than DOS commands. You can't use Linux commands in DOS nor the reverse.

Automation on Windows with Bash like syntax

Is there a way that we can write automation scripts in bash syntax and run it on Windows host (We can call the executable file .exe of Windows). The Windows batch syntax looks quite complex :D
Any suggestions are appreciated.
You can use cygwin or mingw sys for this.
They are both just BASH implementation available on WinXX (actually they are much more, but you need now only bash).
But there are some differences:
cygwin uses its own file system hierarchy, with Win drives mapped to a part. subdirs. All related to file names is more unix-style. There are some problems with passing pathnames to Windows programs.
MinGW is more Windows friendly, file paths are like in Windows, less problems with Windows native programs.
You should try yourself and choose what you need.
You could install cygwin and run bash.
You can get a win32 port of bash. Cygwin is enormous, but native windows bash and a few utilities can be had for a much smaller footprint.
Start with UnxUtils, which includes a sh based on zsh (it's quite slow, though).
If that's not enough you can get a win32 bash from some places, though most are older versions.

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