Manipulating datestamp string consistently with date format %Y%m%d

Question

I need create log files that are essentially date stamps with prefix yp_ and suffix .log, and a manipulated day number:

$ touch yp_$(echo "$(date +%Y%m%d)-10" | /usr/bin/bc -l).log
$ ls
yp_20150912.log   # ... ok for today's date.

That's fine for today, but all hell breaks loose when the day's number is between 01 and 10 included. The result cannot be interpreted as a date stamp any longer.

E.g. just imagine that the day is the 8th of March, 2016, i.e. '20160308'. How do I code the above to make sure that subtracting 10 days will produce not '20150298' but '20150227' ? Also test yr answer with 19820103 ...

-- I looked at man date.

-- apropos date spews out 161 hits that I also reviewed.

Can somebody help with that one-liner?

Answer 1

I need to manipulate dates (whilst paying attention to leap years)

Fortunately, GNU date has a very handy -d option:

-d, --date=STRING
          display time described by STRING, not 'now'

(from man date)

This accepts arbitrary date descriptions, like "now + 1 year" "Jan 28 + 3 weeks"; or in your case: "now - 10 days":

touch yp_$(date -d 'now - 10 days' +%Y%m%d).log

No need for messy invocations of bc, no worrying about leap years- GNU date will handle it.

Answer 2

To display a formatted date for x-days from today:

$ echo $(date +%Y%m%d)
20150922

$ echo $(date -d -10days +%Y%m%d)
20150912

$ echo $(date -d +10days +%Y%m%d)
20151002