date — Display the date and time

date displays the operating system's concept of the current date and time. The following example shows the default format of the date:

Wed Feb 26 14:01:43 EST 1986

date accepts the following options:

–c

Displays the date and displays the time according to Greenwich Mean Time (Coordinated Universal Time) using CUT as the time zone name.

–u

Displays the date and displays the time according to Greenwich Mean Time (Coordinated Universal Time) using GMT as the time zone name.

If the argument to date begins with a + character, date uses format to display the date. date writes all characters in format, except for the % and the character that immediately follows it, directly to the standard output. After date exhausts the format string, it outputs a newline character. The % character introduces a special format field similar to the printf() function in the C library. date supports the following field descriptors:

%A

The full weekday name (for example, Sunday).

%a

The three-letter abbreviation for the weekday (for example, Sun).

%B

The full month name (for example, February).

%b

The three-letter abbreviation for the month name (for example, Feb).

%C

The first two digits of the year (00 to 99).

%c

The local representation of the date and time (see %D and %T).

%D

The date in the form mm/dd/yy.

%d

The two-digit day of the month as a number (01 to 31).

%e

The day of the month in a two-character, right-aligned, blank-filled field.

%H

The two-digit hour (00 to 23).

%h

The three-letter abbreviation for the month (for example, Jun).

%I

The hour in the 12-hour clock representation (01 to 12).

%j

The numeric day of the year (001 to 366).

%M

The minute (00 to 59).

%m

The month number (01 to 12).

%n

The newline character.

%p

The local equivalent of a.m. or p.m.

%r

The time in a.m.–p.m. notation (11:53:29 a.m.).

%S

The seconds (00 to 61). There is an allowance for two leap seconds.

%T

The time (14:53:29).

%t

A tab character.

%U

The week number in the year, with Sunday being the first day of the week (00 to 53).

%W

The week number in the year, with Monday being the first day of the week (00 to 53).

%w

The weekday number, with Sunday being 0.

%X

The local time representation (see %T).

%x

The local date representation (see %D).

%Y

The year.

%y

The two-digit year.

%Z

The time zone name (for example, EDT).

%%

A percent-sign character.

The date command also supports the following modified field descriptors to indicate a different format as specified by the locale indicated by LC_TIME. If the current locale does not support a modified descriptor, date uses the unmodified field descriptor value.

%EC

The name of the base year (period) in the current locale's alternate representation.

%Ec

The current locale's alternate date and time representation.

%Ex

The current locale's alternate date representation.

%EY

The full alternate year representation.

%Ey

The offset from %EC (year only) in the current locale's alternate representation.

%Od

The day of the month using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%Oe

The day of the month using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%OH

The hour (24-hour clock) using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%OI

The hour (12-hour clock) using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%OM

The minutes using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%Om

The month using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%OS

The seconds using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%OU

The week number of the year (0–53) (with Sunday as the first day of the week) using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%OW

The week number of the year (0–53) (with Monday as the first day of the week) using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

%Ow

The weekday as a number using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols (Sunday=0).

%Oy

The year (offset from %C) using the current locale's alternate numeric symbols.

date uses the following environment variables:

TZ

Gives the time zone for date to use when displaying the time. This option is ignored if you specify either the –c or the –u option.

For information about setting the local time zone with the TZ environment variable, see Format of the TZ environment variable.

date uses the following localization environment variables:

• LANG
• LC_ALL
• LC_CTYPE
• LC_MESSAGES
• LC_TIME
• NLSPATH

Possible error messages include:

Bad format character x

A character following “%” in the format string was not in the list of field descriptors.

No permission to set date

The system has denied you the right to set the date.