% start=$(date +%s)
% echo "Diff: $(date -d @$(($(date +%s)-$start)) +"%M minutes %S seconds")"
Diff: 00 minutes 11 seconds

这里有一些魔法:

time1=14:30
time2=$( date +%H:%M ) # 16:00
diff=$(  echo "$time2 - $time1"  | sed 's%:%+(1/60)*%g' | bc -l )
echo $diff hours
# outputs 1.5 hours

Sed将a:替换为要转换为1/60的公式。然后用bc计算时间

截至目前(GNU coreutils) 7.4，你现在可以使用-d来做算术:

$ date -d -30days
Sat Jun 28 13:36:35 UTC 2014

$ date -d tomorrow
Tue Jul 29 13:40:55 UTC 2014

你可以使用的单位是天、年、月、小时、分钟和秒:

$ date -d tomorrow+2days-10minutes
Thu Jul 31 13:33:02 UTC 2014

我知道这是一篇较老的文章，但我今天在编写一个脚本时偶然发现了它，该脚本将从日志文件中获取日期和时间并计算delta。下面的脚本当然是多余的，我强烈建议检查我的逻辑和数学。

#!/bin/bash

dTime=""
tmp=""

#firstEntry="$(head -n 1 "$LOG" | sed 's/.*] \([0-9: -]\+\).*/\1/')"
firstEntry="2013-01-16 01:56:37"
#lastEntry="$(tac "$LOG" | head -n 1 | sed 's/.*] \([0-9: -]\+\).*/\1/')"
lastEntry="2014-09-17 18:24:02"

# I like to make the variables easier to parse
firstEntry="${firstEntry//-/ }"
lastEntry="${lastEntry//-/ }"
firstEntry="${firstEntry//:/ }"
lastEntry="${lastEntry//:/ }"

# remove the following lines in production
echo "$lastEntry"
echo "$firstEntry"

# compute days in last entry
for i in `seq 1 $(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $2}')`; do {
  case "$i" in
   1|3|5|7|8|10|12 )
    dTime=$(($dTime+31))
    ;;
   4|6|9|11 )
    dTime=$(($dTime+30))
    ;;
   2 )
    dTime=$(($dTime+28))
    ;;
  esac
} done

# do leap year calculations for all years between first and last entry
for i in `seq $(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $1}') $(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $1}')`; do {
  if [ $(($i%4)) -eq 0 ] && [ $(($i%100)) -eq 0 ] && [ $(($i%400)) -eq 0 ]; then {
    if [ "$i" = "$(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $1}')" ] && [ $(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $2}') -lt 2 ]; then {
      dTime=$(($dTime+1))
    } elif [ $(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $2}') -eq 2 ] && [ $(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $3}') -lt 29 ]; then {
      dTime=$(($dTime+1))
    } fi
  } elif [ $(($i%4)) -eq 0 ] && [ $(($i%100)) -ne 0 ]; then {
    if [ "$i" = "$(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $1}')" ] && [ $(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $2}') -gt 2 ]; then {
      dTime=$(($dTime+1))
    } elif [ $(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $2}') -eq 2 ] && [ $(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $3}') -ne 29 ]; then {
      dTime=$(($dTime+1))
    } fi
  } fi
} done

# substract days in first entry
for i in `seq 1 $(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $2}')`; do {
  case "$i" in
   1|3|5|7|8|10|12 )
    dTime=$(($dTime-31))
    ;;
   4|6|9|11 )
    dTime=$(($dTime-30))
    ;;
   2 )
    dTime=$(($dTime-28))
    ;;
  esac
} done

dTime=$(($dTime+$(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $3}')-$(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $3}')))

# The above gives number of days for sample. Now we need hours, minutes, and seconds
# As a bit of hackery I just put the stuff in the best order for use in a for loop
dTime="$(($(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $6}')-$(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $6}'))) $(($(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $5}')-$(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $5}'))) $(($(echo $lastEntry|awk '{print $4}')-$(echo $firstEntry|awk '{print $4}'))) $dTime"
tmp=1
for i in $dTime; do {
  if [ $i -lt 0 ]; then {
    case "$tmp" in
     1 )
      tmp="$(($(echo $dTime|awk '{print $1}')+60)) $(($(echo $dTime|awk '{print $2}')-1))"
      dTime="$tmp $(echo $dTime|awk '{print $3" "$4}')"
      tmp=1
      ;;
     2 )
      tmp="$(($(echo $dTime|awk '{print $2}')+60)) $(($(echo $dTime|awk '{print $3}')-1))"
      dTime="$(echo $dTime|awk '{print $1}') $tmp $(echo $dTime|awk '{print $4}')"
      tmp=2
      ;;
     3 )
      tmp="$(($(echo $dTime|awk '{print $3}')+24)) $(($(echo $dTime|awk '{print $4}')-1))"
      dTime="$(echo $dTime|awk '{print $1" "$2}') $tmp"
      tmp=3
      ;;
    esac
  } fi
  tmp=$(($tmp+1))
} done

echo "The sample time is $(echo $dTime|awk '{print $4}') days, $(echo $dTime|awk '{print $3}') hours, $(echo $dTime|awk '{print $2}') minutes, and $(echo $dTime|awk '{print $1}') seconds."

您将得到如下输出。

2012 10 16 01 56 37
2014 09 17 18 24 02
The sample time is 700 days, 16 hours, 27 minutes, and 25 seconds.

我修改了一点脚本，使其独立(即。只是设置变量值)，但也许总体思想也是如此。您可能需要对负值进行额外的错误检查。

% start=$(date +%s)
% echo "Diff: $(date -d @$(($(date +%s)-$start)) +"%M minutes %S seconds")"
Diff: 00 minutes 11 seconds

另一种选择是使用dateutils (http://www.fresse.org/dateutils/#datediff):)中的datediff

$ datediff 10:33:56 10:36:10
134s
$ datediff 10:33:56 10:36:10 -f%H:%M:%S
0:2:14
$ datediff 10:33:56 10:36:10 -f%0H:%0M:%0S
00:02:14

你也可以用gawk。Mawk 1.3.4也有strftime和mktime，但旧版本的Mawk和nawk没有。

$ TZ=UTC0 awk 'BEGIN{print strftime("%T",mktime("1970 1 1 10 36 10")-mktime("1970 1 1 10 33 56"))}'
00:02:14

或者这里有另一种GNU日期的方法:

$ date -ud@$(($(date -ud'1970-01-01 10:36:10' +%s)-$(date -ud'1970-01-01 10:33:56' +%s))) +%T
00:02:14