NAME¶

dp - parse dates 822-style

SYNOPSIS¶

DESCRIPTION¶

Dp is a program that parses dates according to the ARPA Internet standard. It also understands many non-standard formats, such as those produced by TOPS-20 sites and some UNIX sites using ctime(3). It is useful for seeing how nmh will interpret a date. The dp program treats each argument as a single date, and prints the date out in the official 822-format. Hence, it is usually best to enclose each argument in quotes for the shell. To override the output format used by dp, the -format string or -format file switches are used. This permits individual fields of the address to be extracted with ease. The string is simply a format string and the file is simply a format file. See mh-format(5) for the details. Here is the default format string used by dp: which says that if an error was detected, print the error, a `:', and the date in error. Otherwise, output the 822-proper format of the date.

FILES¶

^$HOME/.mhprofile~^The user profile

PROFILE COMPONENTS¶

None

SEE ALSO¶

ap(8), Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages (RFC-822)

DEFAULTS¶

`-format' default as described above
`-width' default to the width of the terminal

CONTEXT¶

None

BUGS¶

The argument to the -format switch must be interpreted as a single token by the shell that invokes dp. Therefore, one must usually place the argument to this switch inside quotes.