How to use a date shell script
Here you will find out:
- what a bash date command is
- how to format the bash date and how to use these scripts
- when DiskInternals can help you
Are you ready? Let's read!
What is a bash date command?
Simply put, this is a command used to print the current system date and time. Also, it can be used to set the date and time on a Linux system. The bash date command is among the core Linux utilities, and it prints the date and time zone when a Unix/Linux system is configured.
The current date and time
If you run the bash date command without including a variable, the result will look like what you see below:
How to format the bash date
There are different ways to format the output of a bash date command.
To get date and time in U.S. format (MM/DD/YY HH:MM:SS), use the code below:
Output:
If you want to get the date and time in a different format (e.g., YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS):
How to use these scripts
The easiest way to learn how to run bash date scripts is to run date --help to print the help information.
The following describes the bash date options:
| Format option | Output |
| %a | Abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Mon) |
| %A | Full weekday name (e.g., Monday) |
| %b | Abbreviated month name (e.g., Aug) |
| %B | Full month name (e.g., August) |
| %c | Abbreviated local date and time (e.g., Mon Jan 5 24:20:54 2019) |
| %F | Full date in this format: %Y-%m-%d |
| %s | Seconds |
| %u | Day of the week (1-7), where 1 represents Monday, 2 is Tuesday, etc. |
| %U | Week number of the year (00-53), where Sunday is treated as the first day of the week |
Examples of using a bash date script
For all these examples, take note of the capital and small letters, because “M” and “m” do not mean the same thing.
Get date in MM-YYYY
Get date and time in MM/DD/YY HH:MM:SS
Get date in MM-DD-YYYY
Get time on Unix epoch format
Get date and time in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
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