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Date input formats

This section describes the textual date representations that GNU programs accept. These are the strings you, as a user, can supply as arguments to the various programs. The C interface (via the getdate function) is not described here.

Although the date syntax here can represent any possible time since zero A.D., computer integers are not big enough for such a (comparatively) long time. The earliest date semantically allowed on Unix systems is midnight, 1 January 1970 UCT.

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