Subtract time using date and bash
That last example should have clarified things for you: timezones.
$ TZ=UTC date -d "2019-01-19T05:00:00Z - 2 hours" +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S
2019-01-19_03:00:00
$ TZ=Asia/Colombo date -d "2019-01-19T05:00:00Z - 2 hours" +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S
2019-01-19_08:30:00
As the output clearly varies by the timezone, I'd suspect some non-obvious default taken for a time string without a timezone specified. Testing a couple of values, it seems to be UTC-05:00, though I'm not sure what that is.
$ TZ=UTC date -d "2019-01-19T05:00:00 - 2 hours" +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S%Z
2019-01-19_08:00:00UTC
$ TZ=UTC date -d "2019-01-19T05:00:00Z - 2 hours" +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S%Z
2019-01-19_03:00:00UTC
$ TZ=UTC date -d "2019-01-19T05:00:00" +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S%Z
2019-01-19_05:00:00UTC
It's only used when performing date arithmetic.
It seems the issue here is that - 2 hours is not taken as arithmetic, but as a timezone specifier:
# TZ=UTC date -d "2019-01-19T05:00:00 - 2 hours" +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S%Z --debug
date: parsed datetime part: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 UTC-02
date: parsed relative part: +1 hour(s)
date: input timezone: parsed date/time string (-02)
date: using specified time as starting value: '05:00:00'
date: starting date/time: '(Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 TZ=-02'
date: '(Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 TZ=-02' = 1547881200 epoch-seconds
date: after time adjustment (+1 hours, +0 minutes, +0 seconds, +0 ns),
date: new time = 1547884800 epoch-seconds
date: timezone: TZ="UTC" environment value
date: final: 1547884800.000000000 (epoch-seconds)
date: final: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 08:00:00 (UTC)
date: final: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 08:00:00 (UTC+00)
2019-01-19_08:00:00UTC
So, not only is no arithmetic being done, there seems to be a daylight savings 1 hour adjustment on the time, leading to a somewhat nonsensical time for us.
This also holds for addition:
# TZ=UTC date -d "2019-01-19T05:00:00 + 5:30 hours" +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S%Z --debug
date: parsed datetime part: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 UTC+05:30
date: parsed relative part: +1 hour(s)
date: input timezone: parsed date/time string (+05:30)
date: using specified time as starting value: '05:00:00'
date: starting date/time: '(Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 TZ=+05:30'
date: '(Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 TZ=+05:30' = 1547854200 epoch-seconds
date: after time adjustment (+1 hours, +0 minutes, +0 seconds, +0 ns),
date: new time = 1547857800 epoch-seconds
date: timezone: TZ="UTC" environment value
date: final: 1547857800.000000000 (epoch-seconds)
date: final: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 00:30:00 (UTC)
date: final: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 00:30:00 (UTC+00)
2019-01-19_00:30:00UTC
Debugging a bit more, the parsing seems to be: 2019-01-19T05:00:00 - 2 (-2 being the timezone), and hours (= 1 hour), with an implied addition. It becomes easier to see if you use minutes instead:
# TZ=UTC date -d "2019-01-19T05:00:00 - 2 minutes" +%Y-%m-%d_%H:%M:%S%Z --debug
date: parsed datetime part: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 UTC-02
date: parsed relative part: +1 minutes
date: input timezone: parsed date/time string (-02)
date: using specified time as starting value: '05:00:00'
date: starting date/time: '(Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 TZ=-02'
date: '(Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 05:00:00 TZ=-02' = 1547881200 epoch-seconds
date: after time adjustment (+0 hours, +1 minutes, +0 seconds, +0 ns),
date: new time = 1547881260 epoch-seconds
date: timezone: TZ="UTC" environment value
date: final: 1547881260.000000000 (epoch-seconds)
date: final: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 07:01:00 (UTC)
date: final: (Y-M-D) 2019-01-19 07:01:00 (UTC+00)
2019-01-19_07:01:00UTC
So, well, date arithmetic is being done, just not the one that we asked for. ¯\(ツ)/¯
It works correctly when you convert the input date to ISO 8601 first:
$ date -d "$(date -Iseconds -d "2018-12-10 00:00:00") - 5 hours - 20 minutes - 5 seconds"
So 9. Dez 18:39:55 CET 2018
TLDR: This is not a bug. You've just found one of the subtle but documented behaviours of date. When performing time arithmetic with date, use a timezone-independent format (like Unix time) or read very carefully the documentation to know how to properly use this command.
GNU date uses your system settings (the TZ environment variable or, if unset, the system defaults) to determine the timezone of both the date feeded with the -d/--date option and the date reported by the +format argument. The --date option also let you override the timezone for its own option-argument but it doesn't override the timezone of +format. That's the root of the confusion, IMHO.
Considering that my timezone is UTC-6, compare the following commands:
$ date -d '1970-01-01 00:00:00' '+Normal: %F %T %:z%nUnix: %s'
Normal: 1970-01-01 00:00:00 -06:00
Unix: 21600
$ date -d '1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC' '+Normal: %F %T %:z%nUnix: %s'
Normal: 1969-12-31 18:00:00 -06:00
Unix: 0
$ TZ='UTC0' date -d '1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC' '+Normal: %F %T %:z%nUnix: %s'
Normal: 1970-01-01 00:00:00 +00:00
Unix: 0
The first one uses my timezone for both -d and +format. The second one uses UTC for -d but my timezone for +format. The third one uses UTC for both.
Now, compare the following simple operations:
$ date -d '1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC +1 day' '+Normal: %F %T %:z%nUnix: %s'
Normal: 1970-01-01 18:00:00 -06:00
Unix: 86400
$ TZ='UTC0' date -d '1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC +1 day' '+Normal: %F %T %:z%nUnix: %s'
Normal: 1970-01-02 00:00:00 +00:00
Unix: 86400
Even if the Unix time is telling me the same thing, the "Normal" time differs because of my own timezone.
If I wanted to do the same operation but using exclusively my timezone:
$ TZ='CST+6' date -d '1970-01-01 00:00:00 -06:00 +1 day' '+Normal: %F %T %:z%nUnix: %s'
Normal: 1970-01-02 00:00:00 -06:00
Unix: 108000