Date command is useful to display date in several formats.
Get relative date
date -d "next sunday" date -d "1 day ago"
If string @UNIXTIME is given to date command, then date command convert seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 UTC) to a date.
date -d @1434420000
Display universal time
date -u
Set the current date and time to Jun 15, 2015 17:17
date --set="20150615 17:17"
Format date
# date +"%FORMAT%FORMAT" date "+%d.%m.%y" # time only date +"%T"
Determine which day of the week a given date was.
date -d "2015-06-15" +"%A"
Full list of formats for date command.
| %FORMAT String | Description |
|---|---|
| %% | 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., 21) |
| %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; same as %Y-%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 ( 0..23) |
| %l | hour ( 1..12) |
| %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 |
| %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 1970-01-01 00:00:00 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 timezone (e.g., -0400) |
| %:z | +hh:mm numeric timezone (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) |