view help/dates.txt @ 9651:bd3af545c7c6

diffstat: made test case work with POSIX sh and printf

* arithmetic expression ((...)), without $, is bashism.
* printf '\xXX' seems non-standard. '\0' is okay.
  http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/printf.html

tested with bash 4.0 and dash 0.5.5.1

Some commands allow the user to specify a date, e.g.:

- backout, commit, import, tag: Specify the commit date.
- log, revert, update: Select revision(s) by date.

Many date formats are valid. Here are some examples::

  "Wed Dec 6 13:18:29 2006" (local timezone assumed)
  "Dec 6 13:18 -0600" (year assumed, time offset provided)
  "Dec 6 13:18 UTC" (UTC and GMT are aliases for +0000)
  "Dec 6" (midnight)
  "13:18" (today assumed)
  "3:39" (3:39AM assumed)
  "3:39pm" (15:39)
  "2006-12-06 13:18:29" (ISO 8601 format)
  "2006-12-6 13:18"
  "2006-12-6"
  "12-6"
  "12/6"
  "12/6/6" (Dec 6 2006)

Lastly, there is Mercurial's internal format::

  "1165432709 0" (Wed Dec 6 13:18:29 2006 UTC)

This is the internal representation format for dates. unixtime is the
number of seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 00:00 UTC). offset is
the offset of the local timezone, in seconds west of UTC (negative if
the timezone is east of UTC).

The log command also accepts date ranges::

  "<{datetime}" - at or before a given date/time
  ">{datetime}" - on or after a given date/time
  "{datetime} to {datetime}" - a date range, inclusive
  "-{days}" - within a given number of days of today