Date (Unix)

Usage

Note that the implementation of the date command differs between Unix flavors. Specifically the GNU coreutils based command is much different than other POSIX implementations.

Formatting

{|class="wikitable" |+Format specifiers (format string starts with +) ! Specifier ! Description ! width="150"| Values/Example |- !colspan=3| Day |- | %a ||weekday, abbreviated || |- | %A ||weekday, full || |- || %d ||day of the month (dd), zero padded || |- | %e ||day of the month (dd) || |- | %j ||day of year, zero padded || 001-366 |- | %u ||day of week starting with Monday (1), i.e. mtwtfss || |- | %w ||day of week starting with Sunday (0), i.e. smtwtfs || |- !colspan=3| Week |- | %U ||week number Sunday as first day of week ||01–53 |- | %W ||week number Monday as first day of week ||01–53 |- | %V ||week of the year ||01–53 |- !colspan=3| Month |- |%m ||mm month || |- |%h ||Mon || |- |%b ||Mon, locale's abbreviated || |- |%B ||locale's full month, variable length || |- !colspan=3| Year |- | %y ||yy two digit year ||00–99 |- | %Y ||ccyy year || |- | %g ||2-digit year corresponding to the %V week number || |- | %G ||4-digit year corresponding to the %V week number || |- !colspan=3| Century |- | %C ||cc century ||00–99 |- !colspan=3| Date |- | %D ||mm/dd/yy || // |- | %x ||locale's date representation (mm/dd/yy) || // |- | %F ||%Y-%m-%d || -- |- !colspan=3| Hours |- | %l (Lowercase L) ||hour (12 hour clock) || |- | %I (Uppercase I) ||hour (12 hour clock) zero padded || |- | %k ||hour (24 hour clock) || |- | %H ||hour (24 hour clock) zero padded || |- |%p ||locale's upper case AM or PM (blank in many locales) || |- | %P ||locale's lower case am or pm || |- !colspan=3| Minutes |- | %M ||MM minutes || |- !colspan=3| Seconds |- | %s ||seconds since 00:00:00 1970-01-01 UTC (Unix epoch) || |- | %S ||SS second ||00–60(The 60 is necessary to accommodate a leap second) |- | %N ||nanoseconds ||000000000–999999999 |- !colspan=3| Time |- | %r ||hours, minutes, seconds (12-hour clock) || |- | %R ||hours, minutes (24 hour clock) || hh:mm e.g. |- | %T ||hours, minutes, seconds (24-hour clock) || |- | %X ||locale's time representation (%H:%M:%S) |- !colspan=3| Date and Time |- | %c ||locale's date and time ||Sat Nov 04 12:02:33 EST 1989 |- !colspan=3| Time zone |- | %z ||-zzzz RFC-822 style numeric timezone || -0500 |- | %Z ||time zone (e.g., EDT) nothing if no time zone is determinable || EST |}

literals: %n newline      %% percent      %t horizontal tab

By default, date pads numeric fields with zeroes.

GNU date, but not BSD date, recognizes - (hyphen) do not pad the field and _ (underscore) pad the field with spaces between % and a numeric directive.

TZ Specifies the timezone, unless overridden by command line parameters. If neither is specified, the setting from /etc/localtime is used.