Hallo mark!
export TZUTC=$(date +"%z" | sed 's/\+//')
Yes but then $TZUTC won't work for normal dating applications as shown by using my FTN date and what would be a corrupted TZUTC since all my systems are set to UTC;
-={ '<Esc>:read !date --date="18 May 19 15:58:01 0000"' starts }=-
date: invalid date ‘18 May 19 15:58:01 0000’
-={ '<Esc>:read !date --date="18 May 19 15:58:01 0000"' ends }=-
Without the '+' character (when applicable) produces further error unless compensated for. Personally I don't trust date/time and tend to just ignore it for the mostpart, especially 2 digit year based ones. It is simpler - and I believe better - to completely ignore it rather than create a worse bug at the expense of exporting obviously corrupted data. Also, and more importantly, the TZUTC is part of the msg_body and thus by my recongning shouldn't be tinkered with even it is obviously corrupted such in the case of UTC. By simply not adding one is the correct answer methinks. However I'd be receptive to something along this line instead;
@RFC-3339: 2019-05-18 15:58:01 +0000
which shows a proper full date without the TZUTC corruption or the English abbreviations which cause even more grief which I won't get into here. The above kludge can be created using the strftime specifiers +"%F %T %z". So for coreutils 'date' it could look like this;
export RFC3339=$(date --date="@${UNIXTIME}" +"%F %T %z")
Note in the above that $unixtime is the time in seconds when this reply was set in motion = 1558195081 and is used to set the FTN datetime stamp as well. That might be a more useful kludge and could also be set to use nanoseconds for greater uniqueness as follows;
export UNIXTIME=$(date +"%s.%N")
My vote would be to supply the unixtime (with or without nanoseconds) and then use that to produce whatever datetime stamp the end user wishes to display the date and time at their end without having to alter the original packed message(s).
Het leven is goed,
Maurice
... Huil niet om mij, ik heb vi.
--- GNU bash, version 5.0.7(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
* Origin: Little Mikey's EuroPoint - Ladysmith BC, Canada (2:280/464.113)