[time-nuts] Anyone know a portable way of getting seconds since epoch?

[David Kirkby]

2009/10/13 Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>:
> In message <286f7bad0910130703v6680affbx95905a440000099f at mail.gmail.com>, David
>  Kirkby writes:
>>I've asked this on comp.unix.shell, but never got a 100% satsifactory
>>answer. Perhaps someone here might know.
>>
>>Does anyone know how to get the number of seconds since 1/1/1970 on a
>>Unix system using the shell - not compiling C code. I can't assume the
>>computer has perl, python or a C compiler.
>
> On FreeBSD you can use the strftime facility in date(1):
>
>        $ date +%s
>        1255442977
>
> Poul-Henning
But it does not work on Solaris or HP-UX