dp(8)

dp8

Parse dates 822-style

Usage

/usr/lib/mh/dp [-form formatfile] [-format string] [-width columns] [-version] [-help] dates ...

Overview

Dp is a program that parses dates according to the ARPA Internet standard. It also understands many non-standard formats, such as those produced by TOPS-20 sites and some UNIX sites using ctime(3). It is useful for seeing how nmh will interpret a date.

The dp program treats each argument as a single date, and prints the date out in the official 822-format. Hence, it is usually best to enclose each argument in quotes for the shell.

To override the output format used by dp, the -format string or -format file switches are used. This permits individual fields of the address to be extracted with ease. The string is simply a format string and the file is simply a format file. See mh-format(5) for the details.

Here is the default format string used by dp:

%<(nodate{text})error: %{text}%|%(putstr(pretty{text}))%>

which says that if an error was detected, print the error, a `:', and the date in error. Otherwise, output the 822-proper format of the date.

Files

^$HOME/.mh_profile~^The user profile

Profile components

None

Defaults

`-format' default as described above
`-width' default to the width of the terminal

Context

None

Releases

10 releases since Debian 1.1 (Buzz); the text changed 8 times.

  1. 1.1
  2. 2.0
  3. 2.1
  4. 2.2
  5. 3.0
  6. 3.1–4.0
  7. 5.0
  8. 6.0
  9. 7

Bugs

The argument to the -format switch must be interpreted as a single token by the shell that invokes dp. Therefore, one must usually place the argument to this switch inside quotes.

From nmh 1.5-release-0.2 in Debian 7 (Wheezy). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.