DATE

NAME

date - manual page for date 9.1

SYNOPSIS

date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

DESCRIPTION

Display date and time in the given FORMAT. With -s, or with [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]], set the date and time.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
-d, --date=STRING

display time described by STRING, not ’now’

--debug

annotate the parsed date, and warn about questionable usage to stderr

-f, --file=DATEFILE

like --date; once for each line of DATEFILE

-I[FMT], --iso-8601[=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

-R, --rfc-email

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

-r, --reference=FILE

display the last modification time of FILE

-s, --set=STRING

set time described by STRING

-u, --utc, --universal

print or set Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

FORMAT controls the output. Interpreted sequences are:

	%%		a literal %
	%a		locale’s abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Sun)
	%A		locale’s full weekday name (e.g., Sunday)
	%b		locale’s abbreviated month name (e.g., Jan)
	%B		locale’s full month name (e.g., January)
	%c		locale’s date and time (e.g., Thu Mar 3 23:05:25 2005)
	%C		century; like %Y, except omit last two digits (e.g., 20)
	%d		day of month (e.g., 01)
	%D		date; same as %m/%d/%y
	%e		day of month, space padded; same as %_d
	%F		full date; like %+4Y-%m-%d
	%g		last two digits of year of ISO week number (see %G)
	%G		year of ISO week number (see %V); normally useful only with %V
	%h		same as %b
	%H		hour (00..23)
	%I		hour (01..12)
	%j		day of year (001..366)
	%k		hour, space padded ( 0..23); same as %_H
	%l		hour, space padded ( 1..12); same as %_I
	%m		month (01..12)
	%M		minute (00..59)
	%n		a newline
	%N		nanoseconds (000000000..999999999)
	%p		locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known
	%P		like %p, but lower case
	%q		quarter of year (1..4)
	%r		locale’s 12-hour clock time (e.g., 11:11:04 PM)
	%R		24-hour hour and minute; same as %H:%M
	%s		seconds since the Epoch (1970-01-01 00:00 UTC)
	%S		second (00..60)
	%t		a tab
	%T		time; same as %H:%M:%S
	%u		day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday
	%U		week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
	%V		ISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53)
	%w		day of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday
	%W		week number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
	%x		locale’s date representation (e.g., 12/31/99)
	%X		locale’s time representation (e.g., 23:13:48)
	%y		last two digits of year (00..99)
	%Y		year
	%z		+hhmm numeric time zone (e.g., -0400)
	%:z		+hh:mm numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00)
	%::z		+hh:mm:ss numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00:00)
	%:::z		numeric time zone with : to necessary precision (e.g., -04, +05:30)
	%Z		alphabetic time zone abbreviation (e.g., 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
	+		pad with zeros, and put ’+’ before future years with >4 digits
	ˆ		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

Show the local time for 9AM next Friday on the west coast of the US

$ date --date=’TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 09:00 next Fri’

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/> Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/> Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/date> or available locally via: info ’(coreutils) date invocation’

AUTHOR

Written by David MacKenzie.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.