[SOLVED] Shell script to compare the time difference and alert if greater than 5 minutes?

Issue

I am trying to create a script in AIX (ksh/bash) where I need to compare two variables with two different date formats, and raise an alert if the difference between the StartTime and CurrentTime is greater than 5 minutes.

As an example, if I have a script that has these three variables:

StartTime="20 Oct 2022 12:20:48 -0700"
CurrentTime=$(date)
AlertThreshold=300

How can I compare the two, and do something if the difference between StartTime and CurrentTime is greater than AlertThreshold (300 seconds)?

The value returned by $(date) is in this format: Thu Oct 20 12:37:05 PDT 2022

I am stuck trying to figure out a way to convert both variables to a format where I can compare the values, so that I can test to see if the time difference is greater than AlertThreshold.

I assume both would need to be converted to unix timestamp to compare?

Any help would be appreciated.

date command usage:

[mmddHHMM[[cc]yy]] [+"Field Descriptors"]
Usage: date [-n][-u] [mmddHHMM[.SS[cc]yy]] [+"Field Descriptors"]
Usage: date [-a [+|-]sss[.fff]]

Solution

Can't you use perl?

if perl -MDate::Parse -e '
   exit( str2time($ARGV[1]) - str2time($ARGV[0]) <= $ARGV[2] )
   ' "$StartTime" "$CurrentTime" "$AlertThreshold"
then
    echo alert
fi

Answered By - Fravadona

Answer Checked By - Cary Denson (WPSolving Admin)