to get the name of previous month

Question

I want to get the name of the previous month to define it as a variable in my shell script. I tried different commands available on the internet, but doesn't seem working, like:

TZ=CST+24 date +%b gives me output as Aprand date -d "last month" '+%Y%m' gives the output as :

date: illegal option -- d Usage: date [-u] [+format] date [-u] [mmddhhmm[[cc]yy]] date [-a [-]sss.fff]

My expected output is Mar or March

`TZ=CST+24 date +%b` gives the output : `Apr`, i want the name of previous month ,i.e `Mar`. — User123, Apr 23 '18 at 18:43

markp-fuso · Answer 1 · 2018-04-23T19:38:49.283

0

EDIT: Question has been updated to show that the -d option is invalid in HP-UX's date.

Consider looking at getting past dates in HP-UX with ksh for some ideas.

How about:

$ date -d 'last month'
Fri Mar 23 14:16:13 CDT 2018

$ date -d 'last month'
Fri Mar 23 14:16:15 CDT 2018

$ date -d 'last month' '+%b'
Mar

edited Apr 23 '18 at 19:38

answered Apr 23 '18 at 19:11

markp-fuso

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I'm getting below error after running this command:`date: illegal option -- d Usage: date [-u] [+format] date [-u] [mmddhhmm[[cc]yy]] date [-a [-]sss.fff]` – User123 Apr 23 '18 at 19:16
I'm on `HP-UX` OS – User123 Apr 23 '18 at 19:17
which shell are you using? `date -d` is working on my solaris, linux and windows/cygwin hosts ... sorry, don't have access to a HP-UX box ... – markp-fuso Apr 23 '18 at 19:17
i'm using `-ksh` – User123 Apr 23 '18 at 19:19
hmmm ... how'd you get your example command (including `date -d`) to work, but my proposed command generates an error ... ? You cut-n-pasted my answer ... and it generates an error? – markp-fuso Apr 23 '18 at 19:22
ummm, so your example is also generating the `-d = illegal option` message? – markp-fuso Apr 23 '18 at 19:28

to get the name of previous month

1 Answers1