Dear Andreas,

I tried using @DATE +format@ in my fax header (~/.faxheader), but always got the default 'date' output instead.

It appears that the escaping of a plus sign in /usr/bin/faxspool, in conjunction with GNU sed, might be causing this.

My ~/.faxheader looks like this:

  @DATE +%m/%d %Y %R@ @ID@  @N@ (@U@) -> @D@ (@T@)  PAGE @P@/@M@

Expected FDATE variable contents (see below) would be something like:

05/17 2021 20:54

Instead I got an empty FDATE variable, and hence, the default output of the 'date' command instead; something like:

mån 17 maj 2021 20:57:40 CEST

Suggested change (unified diff):
--- /usr/bin/faxspool   2018-10-06 22:17:07.000000000 +0200
+++ ./faxspool.NEW      2021-05-17 20:48:40.110235800 +0200
@@ -938,7 +938,7 @@
     if [ -n "$FAX_HEADER" ]
     then
        # flexible DATE format
-       FDATE=`sed -n -e '\!@DATE \+[0-9a-zA-Z: \./%\-]*@!s!.*@DATE \(\+[0-9a-zA-Z: \./%\-]*\)@.*!\1!p' $FAX_HEADER`
+       FDATE=`sed -n -e '\!@DATE +[0-9a-zA-Z: \./%\-]*@!s!.*@DATE \(\+[0-9a-zA-Z: \./%\-]*\)@.*!\1!p' $FAX_HEADER`
        if [ -n "$FDATE" ] ; then
            DATE_OUT=`date "$FDATE"`
        else

Some searching yielded this:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/63940155

Might this be the explanation?
And, would the removal of the escaping cause problems for those not using GNU sed?

Many thanks in advance!

Best regards
Björn

Hello again,

This also appears to work (having sed:amd64/bookworm 4.9-1):

DATE=`sed -E -n -e '\!@DATE \+[0-9a-zA-Z: \./%\-]*@!s!.*@DATE \+([0-9a-zA-Z: \./%\-]*)@.*!\1!p' $FAX_HEADER`

Best regards
Björn