Linux date command examples Linux 15.06.2015

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 StringDescription
%%a literal %
%alocale's abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Sun)
%Alocale's full weekday name (e.g., Sunday)
%blocale's abbreviated month name (e.g., Jan)
%Blocale's full month name (e.g., January)
%clocale's date and time (e.g., Thu Mar 3 23:05:25 2005)
%Ccentury; like %Y, except omit last two digits (e.g., 21)
%dday of month (e.g, 01)
%Ddate; same as %m/%d/%y
%eday of month, space padded; same as %_d
%Ffull date; same as %Y-%m-%d
%glast two digits of year of ISO week number (see %G)
%Gyear of ISO week number (see %V); normally useful only with %V
%hsame as %b
%Hhour (00..23)
%Ihour (01..12)
%jday of year (001..366)
%khour ( 0..23)
%lhour ( 1..12)
%mmonth (01..12)
%Mminute (00..59)
%na newline
%Nnanoseconds (000000000..999999999)
%plocale's equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known
%Plike %p, but lower case
%rlocale's 12-hour clock time (e.g., 11:11:04 PM)
%R24-hour hour and minute; same as %H:%M
%sseconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
%Ssecond (00..60)
%ta tab
%Ttime; same as %H:%M:%S
%uday of week (1..7); 1 is Monday
%Uweek number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
%VISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53)
%wday of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday
%Wweek number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
%xlocale's date representation (e.g., 12/31/99)
%Xlocale's time representation (e.g., 23:13:48)
%ylast two digits of year (00..99)
%Yyear
%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)
%:::znumeric time zone with : to necessary precision (e.g., -04, +05:30)
%Zalphabetic time zone abbreviation (e.g., EDT)