How to check if today is a weekend in bash?

Question

How to check if today is a weekend using bash or even perl?

I want to prevent certain programs to run on a weekend.

Answer 1

printf also has date

printf -v day '%(%a)T'
case $day in 
    Sat|Sun) echo "Hooray!";;
esac

https://ideone.com/wU7C0c - demo