date
date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]...
date [OPTION]... [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
FORMAT controls the output. Interpreted sequences are:
| Sequence | Description | Example |
| -------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------- |
| %% | a literal % | % |
| %a | locale's abbreviated weekday name | Sun |
| %A | locale's full weekday name | Sunday |
| %b | locale's abbreviated month name | Jan |
| %B | locale's full month name | January |
| %c | locale's date and time | Thu Mar 3 23:05:25 2005|
| %C | century; like %Y, except omit last two digits | 20 |
| %d | day of month | 01 |
| %D | date; same as %m/%d/%y | 12/31/99 |
| %e | day of month, space padded; same as %_d | 3 |
| %F | full date; same as %Y-%m-%d | 2005-03-03 |
| %g | last two digits of year of ISO week number (see %G) | 05 |
| %G | year of ISO week number (see %V); normally useful only with %V | 2005 |
| %h | same as %b | Jan |
| %H | hour (00..23) | 23 |
| %I | hour (01..12) | 11 |
| %j | day of year (001..366) | 062 |
| %k | hour, space padded ( 0..23); same as %_H | 3 |
| %l | hour, space padded ( 1..12); same as %_I | 9 |
| %m | month (01..12) | 03 |
| %M | minute (00..59) | 30 |
| %n | a newline | \\n |
| %N | nanoseconds (000000000..999999999) | 123456789 |
| %p | locale's equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known | PM |
| %P | like %p, but lower case | pm |
| %q | quarter of year (1..4) | 1 |
| %r | locale's 12-hour clock time | 11:11:04 PM |
| %R | 24-hour hour and minute; same as %H:%M | 23:30 |
| %s | seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1615432800 |
| %S | second (00..60) | 30 |
| %t | a tab | \\t |
| %T | time; same as %H:%M:%S | 23:30:30 |
| %u | day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday | 4 |
| %U | week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53) | 10 |
| %V | ISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53) | 12 |
| %w | day of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday | 4 |
| %W | week number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53) | 11 |
| %x | locale's date representation | 03/03/2005 |
| %X | locale's time representation | 23:30:30 |
| %y | last two digits of year (00..99) | 05 |
| %Y | year | 2005 |
| %z | +hhmm numeric time zone | -0400 |
| %:z | +hh:mm numeric time zone | -04:00 |
| %::z | +hh:mm:ss numeric time zone | -04:00:00 |
| %:::z | numeric time zone with : to necessary precision | -04, +05:30 |
| %Z | alphabetic time zone abbreviation | EDT |
By default, date pads numeric fields with zeroes.
The following optional flags may follow '%':
* `-` (hyphen) do not pad the field
* `_` (underscore) pad with spaces
* `0` (zero) pad with zeros
* `^` use upper case if possible
* `#` use opposite case if possible
After any flags comes an optional field width, as a decimal number;
then an optional modifier, which is either
* `E` to use the locale's alternate representations if available, or
* `O` to use the locale's alternate numeric symbols if available.
Examples:
Convert seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 UTC) to a date
date --date='@2147483647'
Show the time on the west coast of the US (use tzselect(1) to find TZ)
TZ='America/Los_Angeles' date
Print or set the system date and time
Options
--date=<STRING>,-d <STRING>-
display time described by STRING, not ‘now’
--file=<DATEFILE>,-f <DATEFILE>-
like –date; once for each line of DATEFILE
--iso-8601=<FMT>,-I <FMT>-
output date/time in ISO 8601 format.
FMT=‘date’ for date only (the default),
‘hours’, ‘minutes’, ‘seconds’, or ‘ns’
for date and time to the indicated precision.
Example: 2006-08-14T02:34:56-06:00 --resolution-
output the available resolution of timestamps
Example: 0.000000001 --rfc-email,-R-
output date and time in RFC 5322 format.
Example: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 02:34:56 -0600 --rfc-3339=<FMT>-
output date/time in RFC 3339 format.
FMT=‘date’, ‘seconds’, or ‘ns’
for date and time to the indicated precision.
Example: 2006-08-14 02:34:56-06:00 --debug-
annotate the parsed date, and warn about questionable usage to stderr
--reference=<FILE>,-r <FILE>-
display the last modification time of FILE
--set=<STRING>,-s <STRING>-
set time described by STRING
--universal,--utc,-u-
print or set Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
Examples
Display the current date using the default locale’s format:
date +%c
Display the current date in UTC, using the ISO 8601 format:
date {{[-u|--utc]}} +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%Z
Display the current date as a Unix timestamp (seconds since the Unix epoch):
date +%s
Convert a date specified as a Unix timestamp to the default format:
date {{[-d|--date]}} @{{1473305798}}
Convert a given date to the Unix timestamp format:
date {{[-d|--date]}} "{{2018-09-01 00:00}}" +%s {{[-u|--utc]}}
Display the current date using the RFC-3339 format (YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss TZ):
date --rfc-3339 s
Set the current date using the format MMDDhhmmYYYY.ss (YYYY and .ss are optional):
date {{093023592021.59}}
Display the current ISO week number:
date +%V
The examples are provided by the tldr-pages project under the CC BY 4.0 License.
Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail.