date command in Unix | Linux Tutorial

date Command

date command is used to display the current system date and time.

date

Mon Mar 31 16:10:40 IST 2019

This command can be used with different format specifiers as arguments. Each format is preceded by the + symbol, then the % operator, and a single character specifying the format.

date +%m

03

date +%h

Mar

date +"%h %m"

Mar 03

m - to print the month (01 - 12)

h - to print month name

d - to print day of the month (1 - 31)

y - to print last two digit of year

H - to print hours

M - to print minutes

S - to print seconds

D - to print date (mm/dd/yy)

T - to print time (hh:mm:ss)