DATE(1) General Commands Manual DATE(1)

date — display or set date and time

date [-ajnRUu] [-d date] [-r seconds] [-z zone] [+format] [[[[[[CC]yy]mm]dd]HH]MM[.SS]]

date [-ajnRu] -f input_format new_date [+format]

date displays the current date and time when invoked without arguments. Providing arguments will format the date and time in a user-defined way or set the date. Only the superuser may set the date.

The options are as follows:

Use adjtime(2) to change the local system time slowly, maintaining it as a monotonically increasing function. -a implies -n.
date
Parse the provided human-described date and time and display the result without actually changing the system clock. (See parsedate(3) for examples.)
input_fmt
Use input_fmt as the format string to parse the new_date provided rather than using the default [[[[[CC]yy]mm]dd]HH]MM[.SS] format. Parsing is done using strptime(3).
Parse the provided canonical representation of date and time (described below) and display the result without actually changing the system clock.
The utility timed(8) is used to synchronize the clocks on groups of machines. By default, if timed(8) is running, date will set the time on all of the machines in the local group. The -n option stops date from setting the time for other than the current machine.
Use a default display format that conforms to the date and time specification in RFC 5322 (Internet Message Format).
seconds
Print out the date and time that is seconds from the Epoch.
Reset the timezone used by date to that which existed when it was invoked. This is only useful after an earlier -u or -z option.
Display or set the date in UTC (universal) time.
zone
Set the timezone to be used by date to zone. If zone is an empty string, revert to the system's default timezone (ignoring any setting of TZ).

Note the -d, -U, -u, and -z options are applied when encountered, hence specifying -u before -d will cause the date to be parsed as coordinated universal time, by default, whereas if -u is specified after -d the date will be parsed using the default timezone, then output will be generated in UTC.

An operand with a leading plus (+) sign signals a user-defined format string which specifies the format in which to display the date and time. The format string may contain any of the conversion specifications described in the strftime(3) manual page, as well as any arbitrary text. A ⟨newline⟩ character is always output after the characters specified by the format string. The format string for the default display is:

%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y

If an operand does not have a leading plus sign, it is interpreted as a value for setting the system's notion of the current date and time. The canonical representation for setting the date and time is:

CC
The first two digits of the year (the century).
yy
The second two digits of the year. If yy is specified, but CC is not, a value for yy between 69 and 99 results in a CC value of 19. Otherwise, a CC value of 20 is used.
mm
The month of the year, from 01 to 12.
dd
The day of the month, from 01 to 31.
HH
The hour of the day, from 00 to 23.
MM
The minute of the hour, from 00 to 59.
SS
The second of the minute, from 00 to 60.

Everything but the minutes is optional.

Time changes for Daylight Saving and Standard Time and leap seconds and years are handled automatically.

The following environment variables affect the execution of date:

The timezone to use when displaying dates. See environ(7) for more information.

/etc/localtime
Symlink pointing to system's default timezone information file in /usr/share/zoneinfo directory.
/usr/lib/locale/⟨L⟩/LC_TIME
Description of time locale ⟨L⟩.
/usr/share/zoneinfo
Time zone information directory.
/usr/share/zoneinfo/posixrules
Used with POSIX-style TZ's.
/usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT
For UTC leap seconds.
/var/log/wtmp
A record of date resets and time changes.
/var/log/messages
A record of the user setting the time.

If /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT is absent, UTC leap seconds are loaded from /usr/share/zoneinfo/posixrules.

The command:

date '+DATE: %m/%d/%y%nTIME: %H:%M:%S'

will display:

DATE: 11/21/87
TIME: 13:36:16

The command:

date 8506131627

sets the date to “June 13, 1985, 4:27 PM”.

The command:

date 1432

sets the time to 2:32 PM, without modifying the date.

The command:

date +%s

prints the current time as seconds since the Epoch.

The command:

date -z America/Chicago -d 13:00 -z Asia/Tokyo +%H:%M

indicates what the time will be in Tokyo when it is 13:00 in Chicago. Any strftime(3) string could be used for the output. The first -z option can be omitted to parse the time as specified by TZ (usually the local timezone), or the second could be replaced by -U to show the parsed time in the local timezone.

Either of the commands:

date -u -d 1970-01-01T00:00:00 -U +%c
date -r 0 +%c

print the local time of the Unix epoch.

Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if unable to set the date, and 2 if able to set the local date, but unable to set it globally.

Occasionally, when timed(8) synchronizes the time on many hosts, the setting of a new time value may require more than a few seconds. On these occasions, date prints: ‘Network time being set’. The message ‘Communication error with’ timed(8) occurs when the communication between date and timed(8) fails.

adjtime(2), gettimeofday(2), settimeofday(2), parsedate(3), strftime(3), utmp(5), environ(7), timed(8)

R. Gusella and S. Zatti, TSP: The Time Synchronization Protocol for UNIX 4.3BSD.

The date utility is expected to be compatible with IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”). However, achieving true compatability requires running date with the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT set, in order to parse the time string in the archaic format POSIX demands, rather than the more rational version described above.

A date utility appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX.

MOUSE September 17, 2024 DATE(1)