bash string to date

Question

Is there an opportunity to convert a string into a date in bash? For example: I have a time format: "%Y-%m-%dS%H:%M:%S". An example of such string is "2009-06-24S12:34:56". I need to convert this string into a date (unix timestamp) in bash. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Use

date --utc --date "<input string>" +%s