title: What is the Best Way to Perform Timestamp Comparison in Bash
body: <p>I have an alert script that I am trying to keep from spamming me so I'd like to place a condition that if an alert has been sent within, say the last hour, to not send another alert.  Now I have a cron job that checks the condition every minute because I need to be alerted quickly when the condition is met but I don't need to get the email every munite until I get the issue under control.  What is the best way to compare time in bash to accomplish this?</p>