Developer's Daily

Unix by Example

DATE

NAME

date − print or set the system date and time

date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
date [OPTION] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

Display the current time in the given FORMAT, or set the system date.

−d, −−date=STRING

display time described by STRING, not ‘now’

−f, −−file=DATEFILE

like −−date once for each line of DATEFILE

−I, −−iso−8601[=TIMESPEC] output an ISO-8601 compliant date/time string.

TIMESPEC=‘date’ (or missing) for date only, ‘hours’, ‘minutes’, or ‘seconds’ for date and time to the indicated precision.

−r, −−reference=FILE

display the last modification time of FILE

−R, −−rfc−822

output RFC-822 compliant date string

−s, −−set=STRING

set time described by STRING

−u, −−utc, −−universal

print or set Coordinated Universal Time

−−help

display this help and exit

−−version

output version information and exit

FORMAT controls the output. The only valid option for the second form specifies Coordinated Universal Time. Interpreted sequences are:

	%%		a literal %
	%a		locale’s abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)
	%A		locale’s full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Saturday)
	%b		locale’s abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)
	%B		locale’s full month name, variable length (January..December)
	%c		locale’s date and time (Sat Nov 04 12:02:33 EST 1989)
	%d		day of month (01..31)
	%D		date (mm/dd/yy)
	%e		day of month, blank padded ( 1..31)
	%h		same as %b
	%H		hour (00..23)
	%I		hour (01..12)
	%j		day of year (001..366)
	%k		hour ( 0..23)
	%l		hour ( 1..12)
	%m		month (01..12)
	%M		minute (00..59)
	%n		a newline
	%p		locale’s AM or PM
	%r		time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss [AP]M)
	%s		seconds since 00:00:00, Jan 1, 1970 (a GNU extension)
	%S		second (00..60)
	%t		a horizontal tab
	%T		time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss)
	%U		week number of year with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
	%V		week number of year with Monday as first day of week (01..52)
	%w		day of week (0..6); 0 represents Sunday
	%W		week number of year with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
	%x		locale’s date representation (mm/dd/yy)
	%X		locale’s time representation (%H:%M:%S)
	%y		last two digits of year (00..99)
	%Y		year (1970...)
	%z		RFC-822 style numeric timezone (-0500) (a nonstandard extension)
	%Z		time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if no time zone is determinable

By default, date pads numeric fields with zeroes. GNU date recognizes the following modifiers between ‘%’ and a numeric directive.

‘-’ (hyphen) do not pad the field ‘_’ (underscore) pad the field with spaces

Report bugs to <bug-sh-utils@gnu.org>.