I have date (GNU coreutils) 7.1 installed on my system.If I try to check dates prior to 14-Dec-1901, I get an invalid date error. For example,  $ date -d 1901-12-13  date: invalid date `1901-12-13'  $ date -d 1901-12-14  Sat Dec 14 00:00:00 EST 1901What should I do to make the date utility to treat years prior to 1901 as valid?I receive similar errors for dates after 19-Jan-2038
date - years prior to 1901 are treated as invalid
shell script;date
Good question.The documentation says it should be allowed. info date 'Date input formats' 'Calendar date items'For numeric months, the ISO 8601 format `YEAR-MONTH-DAY' is allowed,  where YEAR is any positive number, ...A leading zero must be present if a number is less than ten.If YEAR is 68 or smaller, then 2000 is added to it; otherwise, if YEAR is less than 100, then 1900 is added to it.Are you on a 32-bit system?Do you get an error with dates after 2038-01-20 as well, e.g.date -d '2038-01-20'If so, it sounds like GNU date is using a 32-bit time value.I'm not sure how you can fix this other than using a 64-bit system or using a different tool, for example DateTime in Perl or datetime in Python.Some background:Unix times count the number of seconds from January 1 1970 using an integer value.  If the system uses 32-bit integers, it can only count 2.1 billion seconds forward (up to 2038-01-19 03:14:02 UTC) and 2.1 billion seconds backwards (back to 1901-12-13 20:45:52 UTC).More information at:Unix timeYear 2038 problem1901 (Significance of 1901 for Modern Computers)