The command date -d '1 hour ago' works, but date - d '1 hour 1 minutes ago' does not, the "ago" is ignored. Earlier versions of date didn't have this bug. Broken version: date (GNU coreutils) 5.94
you need to do `date -d '1 hour ago 1 minute ago'`
(In reply to comment #1) > you need to do `date -d '1 hour ago 1 minute ago'` For at least the last 10 years '1 hour 1 minute ago' was taken as -61 minutes not +59 minutes. I have a couple of scripts that broke due to this BUG.
Just for the record, the oldest GNU date I have available is 1.16 from 1997 and it takes it as -61 minutes as does 5.3.0 from 2005. And the notation of '1 hour ago 1 minute ago' is interpreted by those versions as '(((1 hour) ago) 1 minute) ago' giving +59 minutes. So this syntax is not even backwards compatible.
the documentation suggests the new behavior is correct (confirmed with upstream) if you still feel this is a bug, talk with upstream http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils