bash - how to get (current) Julian day number?

Question

How to get today's Julian day number (JDN) equivalent? or any date's, for that matter?

I've looked and looked, but only found some functions that produced "year-dayOfYear", not something like: 2457854.

Answer 1

I ended up porting one myself. Here is a SSCCE:

#!/bin/bash

function GetJulianDay # year, month, day
{
  year=$1
  month=$2
  day=$3

  jd=$((day - 32075 + 1461 * (year + 4800 - (14 - month) / 12) / 4 + 367 * (month - 2 + ((14 - month) / 12) * 12) / 12 - 3 * ((year + 4900 - (14 - month) / 12) / 100) / 4))

  echo $jd
}

function GetTodayJulianDay
{
  year=`date +"%Y"`
  month=`date +"%m"`
  day=`date +"%d"`

  todayJd=$(GetJulianDay $year $month $day)

  echo $todayJd
}

# samples

todayJd=$(GetTodayJulianDay)
echo "got today jd: $todayJd"

yesterdayJd=$(GetJulianDay 2017 4 9)
echo "got yesterday jd: $yesterdayJd"

Test it: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.php