Our scripts define the sec() function. It returns the count of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
We use this code:
sec() { date "+%s" }If you need to support a wide range of platforms, then we recommend this code:
sec() {
if date '+%s' >/dev/null 2>&1; then
date '+%s'
elif command -v perl >/dev/null 2>&1; then
perl -e "print time"
elif command -v truss >/dev/null 2>&1 && [ "$(uname)" = SunOS ]; then
truss date 2>&1 | grep ^time | awk -F"= " '{print $2}'
elif command -v truss >/dev/null 2>&1 && [ "$(uname)" = FreeBSD ]; then
truss date 2>&1 | grep ^gettimeofday | cut -d "{" -f2 | cut -d "." -f1
fi
}Thanks to whetu for the portable version.