Talk:Date (Unix command) Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Date_(Unix_command)

This article was nominated for deletion on 26 April 2025. The result of the discussion was redirect.

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@User:TheTechnician27 @User:Zeibgeist @User:Northernhenge

IMV good reasons for retention include the following:

a. Searches and references to this topic redirected to Unix time. This is not only confusing to a reader looking for information about the command, it is misinformation and is part of the reason I felt it necessary to create the article. Unix time is about the internal representation of time and Date (Unix command) is about presentation and management on the command line.

b. A good article needs to be interesting in order to be noteworthy. This was achieved by showing a relationship to the history of the command in Unix and other systems, the ability to use format codes to present information in different styles which was not present in other systems, use of the date command in shell scripting and the impact of resetting the date on security and computer forensics, the implementation relationship to the C strftime, all of which were documented with proper citations from multiple sources. (A similar relationship between strptime and interpreting the -d flag likely exists

c. While not necessary I had outlined several future possible directions for modifying the article, pending the discovery of supporting sources which I believe is possible. It's not reasonable to expect a new article to emerge fully realized

The following criticisms were made:

1. The topic was considered too elementary and not notable as it only appeared in elementary introductory Unix texts.

While the command does appear appear in elementary Unix texts and tutorials in its simple form, few discuss its use in shell scripts. Nemeth (ed al) is an exception as is the article from squash.io. IMV this supplies useful non-trivial information about the command without it becoming(3) a how-to tutorial.

The Unix date command is noteworthy because of its use in shell scripts and its use of format codes and ISO standards to present the date. Earlier versions of the command both in Unix and in comparable environments did not do so. A further noteworthy point was made about the correspondence between format codes used by strftime and date. Including this point without a reference would be like claiming Europe, Africa and the Americas once formed a single large continent by looking at their outlines without referencing research on plate tectonics. I only added this when I came across the supporting statement in the Open Group's discussion of date in the POSIX standards document

2. It read too much like a man page. The topic is more suitable for wikibooks or wikiversity

The man pages, which are referred to in the article, give a complete description of the use of format codes. The article (intentionally) does not. It informs the reader without being pendantic that such format codes exist in the command.

man pages and elementary Unix texts usually do not discuss the use of relative dates and times. The FreeBSD man page has only a light description. The only detailed description I know of appears in the gnu coreutilites documentation.

The wikibooks descriptions of commands do not go beyond single man page references. I agree that an entry on this and several other commands is needed but doing so would not negate the value of this article. I examined wikiversity. The topics there are more generalized and overall coverage of topics are rather sparse. IMV it's a failed project and I would not recommend using it.

3. Wikipedia is not a "how-to" guide.

The article talks about the date command but is sparse on examples on how to use it which would be needed for a how-to manual. This was intentional. Some of the cited references are how-to in nature but not the article itself. See also #1.

4. WP:PRODUCT offered by USER:TheTechnician27

I didn't get this one at all. The date command is not a product.

5. It had only a minor note about the topic history.

I added a section about other versions of the date command in other environments to give a sense of history and a note in the talk page starting a discussion of future directions of the page that would require supporting references. I've considered added a note that the 1st appearance of format codes appears in PWB Unix by referencing the Unix archive at Tufts but hesitated over the concern that it might be considered original research, even though I've seen similar types of statements in other articles.

6. Security was a valid aspect of the article but read like OR original research.

The initial use of {{cn}} was aspirational, not OR as I believed then, based on prior knowledge on the topic, that I or someone else could find reasonable citations. IMV this is a legitimate use of the template, to signal a further enhancement of the article. The comments by USER:Zeibgeist and USER: Northernhenge predate this addition so they were not reacting to it as USER:TheTechnician27 suggested.

7. There's a policy restriction of not using similar articles to justify retention.

That said, the use of precedent is often invoked such as recommending that users examine existing articles to get a sense of what kind of entries are acceptable. While I'd like to argue that it shouldn't be totally ruled out, that one should be able to refer to positive aspects of articles in the same category, I've refrained from doing so here.

For the above reasons I intend to muddle through the appeal process and hope that those who previously criticized the page will now support retention.

GelvinM (talk) 21:12, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Zeibgeist - I appreciate your offer to discuss this page and the redirect from Unix (date). As a courtesy I would have appreciated having this discussion before you decided to delete the content.

The Unix time page which is about how time is represented in Unix systems is a different topic. The redirect to List of POSIX commands is also a loss of information as it lacks details about the parameters of the command. It also failed to mention that date can also set the time, which I will correct shortly.

The date command is not as trivial as a WP:GNG designation would make it, and there are simpler commands such as echo, dirname and pwd that have their own Wikipedia pages.

Features such as recommended input formats for the -d flag and relative time offsets are not usually included in Unix man pages and are buried in the gnu coreutils documentation. The superuser requirement for setting the date is also not mentioned - I've added a source for this.

For the above reasons I have reverted your changes.

There are two environment variables that alter the date presentation - LC_TIME and TZ. I had originally intended to include this information but did not have a source beyond my personal knowledge of the command. I've since located sources for each and have added these changes. GelvinM (talk) 23:12, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When I first saw this article it reminded me of the Wikipedia Manual of Style which says: "Wikipedia is an encyclopedic reference, not an instruction manual, guidebook, or textbook" (WP:NOTHOW). So I tried to find information elsewhere about date (unix command) to see where the idea came from, who wrote the code, how has it developed over time etc etc but I didn’t find anything. I also noticed that it needed quite a bit of attention to its overall formatting. I fixed some issues but, looking at it again, I missed quite a few.

Seeing GelvinM's reference to echo (command), dirname and pwd, I've now looked at those articles and they are less about teaching readers the syntax, and more about explaining the context, so I can see why they are there. However, as a general point, the WP:WHATABOUTX essay says: "The nature of Wikipedia means that you cannot make a convincing argument based solely on whether other articles do or do not exist" so the existence of the dirname article doesn’t defend the existence of the date (Unix command) article. (An alternative argument might be that the command articles collectively form a set, but then we’re back to the NOTHOW problem.)

If this article stays, then it needs far more background information to turn it into an encyclopedia article. It also needs its remaining formatting issues sorting out, for example any quotation marks that don't need to be curly should be straight. (I know some Unix shells make special use of curly quotes so I’m not saying just take them all out.) There's a double-equals sign (==) in the article – is that a typo or does it have a meaning in that location? --Northernhenge (talk) 12:42, 24 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Linux manpage credits David MacKenzie. (I haven’t looked for a Unix manpage.) He doesn’t seem to have a wikipedia article. He’s been interviewed sometimes about his other work and has a video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7vfI-WSP8Q but there isn’t really much to be said about a date command. I’m still concerned about WP:NOTHOW (and although this isn’t a deletion argument, I’m still not convinced by the curly quotes and double-equals). The only reason I haven’t yet nominated it for deletion is that, following @Zeibgeist’s correct (in my view) change to a redirect, @GelvinM wanted to carry on working on it, but I can’t currently see what direction it could go in unfortunately. --Northernhenge (talk) 12:15, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The curly quotes were an artifact of composing the page in Open Office and == was an oversight. Thank you for pointing these out. I've made the corrections. I see the article as more about what the date command is about rather than a complete how to. As such I did not include a description of all or even most of the format codes available.

The main reasons I decided to create the page was that I came across Wikipedia references to the date command which led to the description of Unix time which said nothing about the command itself and is a separate topic. Winding up at the Unix time page would be very confusing.

A different argument I'd like to make is that Wikipedia is also about exposing relationships between different items of knowledge and serves to connect them, which is also what the article does.

Thank you for the video reference! Quite enjoyable. Not all Wikipedia articles have to include a historic component but they are interesting if they do so I took your suggestion and added one. I hope that satisfies your misgivings. David McKenzie is only the author of the Linux version of date and, as the video shows, he only encountered Unix at V4.2 in university so he could not have created the original. I suspect Bill Joy had a role in porting the AT&T version of date to BSD Unix but without a citation one cannot post that.

As to taking the article further, yes, I do have a couple of other ideas as well as references in other articles back to the page but I still need to get around to finding citations. In time that day will come. (pun intended) GelvinM (talk) 19:49, 1 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following ideas could be pursued pending the provision of appropriate references if they are available.

The use of the NTP time synchronization protocol to automatically maintain the date and obsoleting the date -s option could be discussed . FreeBSD already does this and it's an option for gnu Linux. I have no idea what OS X does but this could be looked into. One might make a minor note that the use of NTP could be problematic wrt to embedded (power and connectivity issues) or air-gapped systems however the article on NTP itself should do the heavy lifting.

In Unix the date command is an executable binary /etc/date. This means it can be replaced or turned into a potential security hazard by being spoofed either by replacing the file or changing the value of PATH, both known exploit techniques. It's also an executable binary file in CP/M, DR DOS and MS-DOS. However in the Windows version date is built into the cmd shell.

POSIX extensions %Efmt and %Ofmt of format codes to support other locales are not well discussed wrt the date command in internal and external references except for the POSIX documentation from the Open Group and it's not clear without experimentation (ruled out because of OR) that they are supported in gnu or BSD variations.