4 min readSep 23, 2021
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What is Date command?
The date command displays or sets the system date. It is most commonly used to print the date and time in different formats and calculate future and past dates.
📋Basic use of date command:
1.To print the current date and time, just type “date” in the terminal.
2.This option lets you display the date and time in any format. This would not affect the system’s date and time. It will remain the same.
3.This option lets you display the past days as well as future dates.
4.Date and time of the future.
5.Using this command, we could save the date in the file.
📝Format specifiers:
- %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; 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)
- %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 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 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)
If in case, you want to explore more about Date command you can use “ man date ” command for it.
