DP(8)

NAME
dp - parse dates 822-style

SYNOPSIS
/usr/local/lib/mh/dp [-form formatfile] [-format string] [-width columns] dates ... [-help]

DESCRIPTION
Dp is a program that parses dates according to the ARPA Internet standard. It also understands many non-standard formats, such as those produced by TOPS-20 sites and some UNIX sites using ctime (3). It is useful for seeing how MH will interpret a date. The dp program treats each argument as a single date, and prints the date out in the official 822-format. Hence, it is usually best to enclose each argument in double-quotes for the shell. To override the output format used by dp, the `-format string' or `-format file' switches are used. This permits individual fields of the address to be extracted with ease. The string is simply a format stringand thefile is simply a format file. See mh-format (5) for the details. Here is the default format string used by dp:
%<(nodate{text})error: %{text}%|%(putstr(pretty{text}))%>
which says that if an error was detected, print the error, a `:', and the date in error. Otherwise, output the 822-proper format of the date.
$HOME/.mh_profile    The user profile
None ap(8)
Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages (aka RFC-822) `-format' default as described above `-width' default to the width of the terminal None The argument to the `-format' switch must be interpreted as a single token by the shell that invokes dp. Therefore, one must usually place the argument to this switch inside double-quotes.