Subj : TZUTC fun...
To   : mark lewis
From : Maurice Kinal
Date : Sat May 18 2019 15:58:01

Hallo mark!

 ml> export TZUTC=$(date +"%z" | sed 's/\+//')

Yes but then $TZUTC won't work for normal dating applications as shown by using 
my FTN date and what would be a corrupted TZUTC since all my systems are set to 
UTC;

-={ '<Esc>:read !date --date="18 May 19  15:58:01 0000"' starts }=-
date: invalid date ‘18 May 19  15:58:01 0000’
-={ '<Esc>:read !date --date="18 May 19  15:58:01 0000"' ends }=-

Without the '+' character (when applicable) produces further error unless 
compensated for.  Personally I don't trust date/time and tend to just ignore it 
for the mostpart, especially 2 digit year based ones.  It is simpler - and I 
believe better - to completely ignore it rather than create a worse bug at the 
expense of exporting obviously corrupted data.  Also, and more importantly, the 
TZUTC is part of the msg_body and thus by my recongning shouldn't be tinkered 
with even it is obviously corrupted such in the case of UTC.  By simply not 
adding one is the correct answer methinks.  However I'd be receptive to 
something along this line instead;

  @RFC-3339: 2019-05-18 15:58:01 +0000

which shows a proper full date without the TZUTC corruption or the English 
abbreviations which cause even more grief which I won't get into here.  The 
above kludge can be created using the strftime specifiers +"%F %T %z".  So for 
coreutils 'date' it could look like this;

  export RFC3339=$(date --date="@${UNIXTIME}" +"%F %T %z")

Note in the above that $unixtime is the time in seconds when this reply was set 
in motion = 1558195081 and is used to set the FTN datetime stamp as well.  That 
might be a more useful kludge and could also be set to use nanoseconds for 
greater uniqueness as follows;

  export UNIXTIME=$(date +"%s.%N")

My vote would be to supply the unixtime (with or without nanoseconds) and then 
use that to produce whatever datetime stamp the end user wishes to display the 
date and time at their end without having to alter the original packed 
message(s).

Het leven is goed,
Maurice

.... Huil niet om mij, ik heb vi.
--- GNU bash, version 5.0.7(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
 * Origin: Little Mikey's EuroPoint - Ladysmith BC, Canada (2:280/464.113)

.