How to convert YYYYMMDDHHMMSS to a date readable by `date`

Question

I have a set of date/time strings in the YYYYMMDDHHMMSS format that I want to convert to something readable by the date utility. Usually, I can do something li

Answer 1

Either busybox date or bsd date accept a description of the input format.

Busybox is a GNU small utility, easy to install.

The bsd format has been covered in another answer, so here is busybox:

$ busybox date -D "%Y%m%d%H%M%S" -d "20100101123456" +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
2010-01-01 12:34:56