I just learned (thanks to Gentoo Weekly News) that you can pass
seconds since the epoch to /bin/date to convert it to a different date
format. Precede the number with an atsign, "@".
$ date +%s
1162588934
$ date -d @1162588934
Fri Nov 3 13:22:14 PST 2006
--
Bob Miller K<bob>
kbob at jogger-egg.com