Quick script for parsing datestrings and returning the number of seconds since the Epoch they represent.

date-to-epoch.sh

# Parse a date string (using DateTime::Format::HTTP) and return the number of seconds since epoch it represents.
date-to-epoch-perl () {
  perl -MDateTime::Format::HTTP -E "say DateTime::Format::HTTP::parse_datetime('$1')->strftime('%s');";
}

# Better
date-to-epoch () {
  date --date="$1" +%s;
}