File: coreutils.info, Node: date invocation, Next: arch invocation, Up: System context 21.1 ‘date’: Print or set system date and time ============================================== Synopses: date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT] date [-u|--utc|--universal] [ MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss] ] The ‘date’ command displays the date and time. With the ‘--set’ (‘-s’) option, or with ‘MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]’, it sets the date and time. Invoking ‘date’ with no FORMAT argument is equivalent to invoking it with a default format that depends on the ‘LC_TIME’ locale category. In the default C locale, this format is ‘'+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y'’, so the output looks like ‘Thu Jul 9 17:00:00 EDT 2020’. Normally, ‘date’ uses the time zone rules indicated by the ‘TZ’ environment variable, or the system default rules if ‘TZ’ is not set. *Note Specifying the Time Zone with ‘TZ’: (libc)TZ Variable. If given an argument that starts with a ‘+’, ‘date’ prints the current date and time (or the date and time specified by the ‘--date’ option, see below) in the format defined by that argument, which is similar to that of the ‘strftime’ function. Except for conversion specifiers, which start with ‘%’, characters in the format string are printed unchanged. The conversion specifiers are described below. An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure. * Menu: * Time conversion specifiers:: %[HIklMNpPrRsSTXzZ] * Date conversion specifiers:: %[aAbBcCdDeFgGhjmuUVwWxyY] * Literal conversion specifiers:: %[%nt] * Padding and other flags:: Pad with zeros, spaces, etc. * Setting the time:: Changing the system clock. * Options for date:: Instead of the current time. * Date input formats:: Specifying date strings. * Examples of date:: Examples.