Bash - convert string to date -

i need convert date in bash string has hour included, such as: 2012-02-09-18, , store result inside variable, can compare such strings dates. if use conversion

  date -d "2012-02-09-18" 

it crash "invalid date error". how can this?

you can tweak input make parseable date using sed:

str='2012-02-09-18'  date -d "$(sed 's/-\([^-]*\)$/ \1/' <<< "$str")" thu feb  9 18:00:00 est 2012