Checking for future / non existent dates

[DKNUCKLES]

I'm attempting to script an application for the bash shell. The application needs to check for birthday, but must check the birthday to see if the date is a) in the future b) exists at all (ie Feb 29th during non-leap years). The input is being entered in a YYYYMMDD format, so I was hoping someone could point me in the direction for how to check for future dates and non-existent dates.

Thanks
- D

[wje_lf]

This is fairly easy to do in a bash shell script.

A good place to start is to do this on the command line:

man bash

Then check out the tutorials by googling this:

bash tutorial

Sounds like an interesting homework assignment!

[ghostdog74]

I'm attempting to script an application for the bash shell. The application needs to check for birthday, but must check the birthday to see if the date is a) in the future b) exists at all (ie Feb 29th during non-leap years). The input is being entered in a YYYYMMDD format, so I was hoping someone could point me in the direction for how to check for future dates and non-existent dates.

Thanks
- D

you can use GNU date to check valid dates:

# date --date='29 Feb'
date: invalid date `29 Feb'

please see the man page of date for more info and examples