[vox-tech] date question

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Thu 28 Sep 06,  8:31 AM, Bill Kendrick <nbs at sonic.net> said:
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 11:07:35AM -0400, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> > Yet, "/bin/date" is the thing I'm running when using an unqualified path:
> > 
> >    $ which date
> >    /bin/date
> > 
> > If /bin/date is what I'm running, why doesn't this work unless I specifiy
> > "/bin/date"?
> 
> What shell is this under?  Bash?
 
Yeah.  What else would I be using?    ;-)

> -bill!
> (werks fer me!)

Hmmm...  Really?  That's odd.

Oh, wait.  I think I know.  I already have date aliased to

   $ alias | grep date
   alias date='date +'\''%a %b %d %l:%M %p'\'''

So I'll bet if I do this, it'll work:

   $ date +%Y
   date: extra operand `+%Y'
   Try `date --help' for more information.
   $ \date +%Y
   2006

And when I use a fully qualified path, the shell doesn't use the alias.  OK.
Mystery solved.  Thanks Bill!

Pete