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DATE(1) User Commands DATE(1)
NAME
date - print or set the system date and time
SYNOPSIS
date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
DESCRIPTION
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
-ITIMESPEC, --iso-8601[=TIMESPEC]
output date/time in ISO 8601 format. TIMESPEC='date' for date
only, 'hours', 'minutes', or 'seconds' for date and time to the
indicated precision. --iso-8601 without TIMESPEC defaults to
'date'.
-r, --reference=FILE
display the last modification time of FILE
-R, --rfc-2822
output RFC-2822 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)
%C century (year divided by 100 and truncated to an integer)
[00-99]
%d day of month (01..31)
%D date (mm/dd/yy)
%e day of month, blank padded ( 1..31)
%F same as %Y-%m-%d
%g the 2-digit year corresponding to the %V week number
%G the 4-digit year corresponding to the %V week number
%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
%N nanoseconds (000000000..999999999)
%p locale's upper case AM or PM indicator (blank in many locales)
%P locale's lower case am or pm indicator (blank in many locales)
%r time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss [AP]M)
%R time, 24-hour (hh:mm)
%s seconds since '00:00:00 1970-01-01 UTC' (a GNU extension)
%S second (00..60); the 60 is necessary to accommodate a leap sec-
ond
%t a horizontal tab
%T time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss)
%u day of week (1..7); 1 represents Monday
%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..53)
%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-2822 style numeric timezone (-0500) (a nonstandard exten-
sion)
%Z time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if no time zone is deter-
minable
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
ENVIRONMENT
TZ Specifies the timezone, unless overridden by command line
parameters. If neither is specified, the setting from
/etc/localtime is used.
AUTHOR
Written by David MacKenzie.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to .
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There
is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICU-
LAR PURPOSE.
SEE ALSO
The full documentation for date is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If
the info and date programs are properly installed at your site, the
command
info coreutils date
should give you access to the complete manual.
date (coreutils) 5.2.1 March 2004 DATE(1)
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