Bash script: difference in minutes between two times

Question

I have two time strings; eg. \"09:11\" and \"17:22\" on the same day (format is hh:mm). How do I calculate the time difference in minutes between these two?

Can the

Answer 1

I would convert the dates to UNIX timestamps; you can subtract to get the difference in seconds, then divide by 60:

#!/bin/bash

MPHR=60    # Minutes per hour.

CURRENT=$(date +%s -d '2007-09-01 17:30:24')
TARGET=$(date +%s -d'2007-12-25 12:30:00')

MINUTES=$(( ($TARGET - $CURRENT) / $MPHR ))