Using `date` command to get previous, current and next month

The problem is that date takes your request quite literally and tries to use a date of 31st September (being 31st October minus one month) and then because that doesn't exist it moves to the next day which does. The date documentation (from info date) has the following advice:

The fuzz in units can cause problems with relative items. For example, `2003-07-31 -1 month' might evaluate to 2003-07-01, because 2003-06-31 is an invalid date. To determine the previous month more reliably, you can ask for the month before the 15th of the current month. For example:

 $ date -R Thu, 31 Jul 2003 13:02:39 -0700 $ date --date='-1 month' +'Last month was %B?' Last month was July? $ date --date="$(date +%Y-%m-15) -1 month" +'Last month was %B!' Last month was June!

the following will do:

date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) -1 month" +%-mdate -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) 0 month" +%-mdate -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) 1 month" +%-m

or as you need:

LAST_MONTH=`date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) -1 month" +%-m`NEXT_MONTH=`date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) 1 month" +%-m`THIS_MONTH=`date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) 0 month" +%-m`

you asked for output like 9,10,11, so I used the %-m

%m (without -) will produce output like 09,... (leading zero)

this also works for more/less than 12 months:

date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) -13 month" +%-m

just try

date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-1) -13 month"

to see full result

If you happen to be using date in a MacOS environment, try this:

ST1:~ ejf$ dateMon Feb 20 21:55:48 CST 2017ST1:~ ejf$ date -v-1m +%m01ST1:~ ejf$ date -v+1m +%m03

Also, I'd rather calculate the previous and next month on the first day of each month, this way you won't have issues with months ending the 30/31 or 28/29 (Feb/Feb leap year)