> does anybody know how it would be possible to calculate the difference > between two dates with a shell or awk script, for example from 15:30:23 > to 17:29:01?
Those aren't dates. Those are times, but the following should work either way: try: date -d "15:30:23" +"%s" This will give you the number of seconds from 1970 until the time you specify until today. So you can do something like: sooner=`date -d "15:30:23" +"%s"` later=`date -d "17:29:01" +"%s"` seconds=`expr "$later" - "$sooner"` and $seconds should contain the difference, in seconds. BTW, this is all in plain 'ol shell script. - Joe
