Improve the man pages of --date=STRING for 'date' and 'touch'.

* man/date.x: Add a compact description of the --date=STRING.
* man/touch.x: Likewise.
Reported by A. Costa in http://bugs.debian.org/363011

diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 8415d3d881eadc6722bc35d47c62226d377fbd15..1ef732b2e2fd9020d7f4a7783ab5dc068d02fae1 100644 (file)
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,3 +1,10 @@
+2008-01-29  Bob Proulx  <bob@proulx.com>
+
+       Improve the man pages of --date=STRING for 'date' and 'touch'.
+       * man/date.x: Add a compact description of the --date=STRING.
+       * man/touch.x: Likewise.
+       Reported by A. Costa in http://bugs.debian.org/363011
+
 2008-01-29  Michael Stone  <mstone@debian.org>
 
        Improve the description of when dd outputs its final statistics.

diff --git a/man/date.x b/man/date.x
index bae08ac98c1b2da34d0eb37ffcf61ae3857ef84c..c6e3a65706141b00e3d79e4dc4e170df909f81d1 100644 (file)
--- a/man/date.x
+++ b/man/date.x
@@ -2,3 +2,12 @@
 date \- print or set the system date and time
 [DESCRIPTION]
 .\" Add any additional description here
+[DATE STRING]
+.\" NOTE: keep this paragraph in sync with the one in touch.x
+The --date=STRING is a mostly free format human readable date string
+such as "Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800" or "2004-02-29 16:21:42" or
+even "next Thursday".  If empty the string indicates the beginning of
+the day.  The string may contain calendar date items, time of day
+items, time zone items, day of week items, relative items, and pure
+numbers.  The date string format is more complex than is easily
+documented here but is fully described in the info documentation.

diff --git a/man/touch.x b/man/touch.x
index 64b99dfa1c2af5908b10baaaf3cc214d35482bc6..71f405bf69efb3c223ef100a64668664cd061d8b 100644 (file)
--- a/man/touch.x
+++ b/man/touch.x
@@ -2,3 +2,12 @@
 touch \- change file timestamps
 [DESCRIPTION]
 .\" Add any additional description here
+[DATE STRING]
+.\" NOTE: keep this paragraph in sync with the one in date.x
+The --date=STRING is a mostly free format human readable date string
+such as "Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800" or "2004-02-29 16:21:42" or
+even "next Thursday".  If empty the string indicates the beginning of
+the day.  The string may contain calendar date items, time of day
+items, time zone items, day of week items, relative items, and pure
+numbers.  The date string format is more complex than is easily
+documented here but is fully described in the info documentation.