Read from an ancient log, date is like this:
Wed 31 Oct 2018 08:42:00 AM UTC
The other date is like this:
12-10-2018 14:37:42
which was the best I could get with date -r ${fname} "+%m-%d-%Y %H:%M:%S".
Is it possible to compare these dates? The fact that first uses a word for the day discourages me severely. If yes, how?
If you're getting dates in above format, then you need to convert 2nd data string to make it parseable by Unix date command first. Here is an example:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
dt1='Wed 31 Oct 2018 08:42:00 AM UTC'
dt2='12-10-2018 14:37:42'
dt2=$(sed -E 's/^([0-9]{2}-[0-9]{2})-([0-9]{4})/\2-\1/' <<< "$dt2")
echo "$dt2" # 2018-12-10 14:37:42
# compare EPOCH second values of both dates
if (( $(date -d "$dt1" '+%s') < $(date -d "$dt2" '+%s') )); then
echo "date1 is less than date2"
else
echo "date1 is >= than date2"
fi