Extract just date/timestamp not field tag as well using exiftool in bash script

[akosprime]

I've got a very basic understanding of the exiftool and can do simple command line executions like:

exiftool -modifydate [filename]

But the output includes the field tag, e.g.:

Modify Date:                    : 2022:10:17 06:12:12

I need to use this in a bash script. I cannot use a Perl script because I've been told to not rely on having access to anything that doesn't come with a 'vanilla Red Hat Linux install' although ironically requesting that the exiftool rpm be installed is ok. Honestly, I think there just might be a prejudice against Perl in house. Regardless, I have to develop the script as a bash shell script and invoke exiftool directly inside it.

So, without having to play games with awk/sed to process the output listed above, is there any way to invoke exiftool so that its output is only the date/timestamp and doesn't include the field tag?

The goal is to extract the create and/or modify dates from the metadata and then be able to compare them to a newly uploaded file of the same name to ensure that the newly uploaded file is in fact actually a newer revision and not simply a mistaken upload. This is done because if a file is a newer version, then a cpu and time intensive process is performed on the uploaded file and we wish to avoid this if someone just mistakenly uploads the same file, for example during a bulk upload. So, we need to store the date/time of each file and compare them - that's the ultimate goal here.

I tried searching on the forum, but there are so many threads with 'date' in them that finding this specifically seemed to get lost in the chaff.

Thanks in advance!

[Phil Harvey]

Add -s3 to the command.

- Phil

[akosprime]

Thanks so much! Sorry for missing that very easy option in the man page!