How to convert month into numeric ?

Hi,

Using UNIX command, Is there any possiblity how to convert "month into numeric ? ...
example :
"Jan" ==> 01
"Feb" ==> 02

Previously, I used CASE statement to convert them, but if you have any better ideas, could I shared with you ?

It's real easy in perl -- all you have to do is create a hash object. Are you allowed to use perl or not?

please....perl is too much for this thing...

just do date +%m

%m will display month in numbers

@papajohns:
How do you solve it with a month different from the current one then? I think the original posting implied that he wants to find it for any month.

M.

ah..ic...... if its programin he wants..then i guess a hash is good thing..although a simple shell script can do it too...just set variables...

jan=1, feb=2, so on....but from its context i understand it as he wants it to change month to a number at the unix command line

Here's a thought:



This will output 'Mar'. Perhaps you could use this somehow...?

#!/bin/ksh
##---- function to convert 3 char month into numeric value ----------
convertDate() {
echo $1 | awk -F"-" '{print $1,$2,$3}' | read day mm yyyy ## split the date arg
typeset -u mmm=`echo $mm` ## set month to uppercase
typeset -u months=`cal $yyyy | grep "[A-Z][a-z][a-z]"` ## uppercase list of all months
i=1 ## starting month
for mon in $months; do ## loop thru month list
## if months match, set numeric month (add zero if needed); else increment month counter
[[ "$mon" = "$mmm" ]] && typeset -xZ2 monthNum=$i || (( i += 1 ))
done ## end loop
echo $day$monthNum`echo $yyyy | cut -c3-` ## return all numeric date format ddmmyyyy
}

##---- main ---------------------------------------------------------

convertDate 12-May-2004 ## function call with date argument