DP(8)

✨ DP(8) ✨

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about dp from the nmh squad — she's the parser of RFC 822-style dates and she's lowkey the most underrated little tool in the whole System Manager's Manual lineup. this is section 8, system manager territory, so you know she means business 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

/usr/libexec/nmh/dp [-help] [-version] [-form formatfile] [-format
     string] [-width columns] dates ...

like, she lives at /usr/libexec/nmh/dp and you just hand her some dates ... and she does her thing. there's -help, there's -version, there's -form formatfile, -format string, and -width columns — a whole lil glow-up kit fr fr ✨

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so dp is a program that parses dates according to the ARPA Internet standard. periodt. but here's the tea — she's not rigid about it, because she also understands many non-standard formats, like the ones produced by TOPS-20 sites and some Unix sites using ctime(3). she's flexible, she's forgiving, she's giving main character energy 🦋

and why do you care? because she's useful for seeing how nmh will interpret a date. that's literally her whole vibe check. you feed her a date, she tells you what nmh thinks it means. no cap.

the way she works: dp treats each argument as a single date, and prints the date out in the official RFC 822 format. so heads up bestie — it's usually best to enclose each argument in quotes for the shell, otherwise your shell is gonna eat it before dp ever gets a bite 😭

wanna override the output format? iconic, go off. you use the -format string or -format file switches. this lets you extract individual fields of the address with ease — the string is simply a format string and the file is simply a format file. all the deets live in mh-format(5), so go read that if you want the full lore 🎀

here's the default format string dp uses:

%<(nodate{text})error: %{text}%|%(putstr(pretty{text}))%>

and what is she even saying with that? okay so: if an error was detected, print the error, a :, and the date in error. Otherwise, output the RFC 822-proper format of the date. she's got range, she's got structure, she ate 💅

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• $HOME/.mh_profile — The user's profile.

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🧚 PROFILE COMPONENTS 🧚

None

like... nothing. empty. she's self-sufficient, she doesn't need your profile to slay 🙈

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• fmttest(1)
• ap(8)

also, and this is important: Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages (RFC 822) — that's the source material, the blueprint, the origin story ⭐

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⭐ DEFAULTS ⭐

• -format — As described above. (iykyk, scroll back up bestie)
• -width — The width of the terminal.

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💜 CONTEXT 💜

None

yeah. no context. she said "I don't need the drama" and honestly? respect 😌

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🌸 quick reminder from your girl: keep every argument quoted for the shell, and if you're confused about formats, mh-format(5) is right there. no guessing, just vibes and documentation.

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and that's the whole page, bestie — this was nmh-1.8, dated 1999-04-30, living under the System Manager's Manual umbrella. she's been iconic since the 90s and she's still parsing dates like it's nothing 💖✨🫶