Date and Timestamps in UNIX/Linux
The date and time information is not as visible on the command line as it is in the graphical version of Linux, but we can certainly dateget that information using the command.
This article will explain how to use datethe command to get, parse, convert date and time, and print them in different formats on Linux assuming the Bash shell command line.
Get Current Date and Time in Linux
As shown, running dategives us the current date and time along with the time zone.
user@linux:~$ date
Tue 01 Jan 2022 12:00:00 AM +04
The default date and time format will be in your time zone - in this case datethe output is suitable for GMT+04users whose time zones are Gulf Standard Time or . To print the date and time in a different format, such as UTC or GMT, or yyyy/mm/dd 或 dd/mm/yyyy, you can specify that format using the following special modifiers.
# to print the current date in dd/mm/yyyy format
date +%d-%m-%Y
# to print the current date and time in UTC
date -u
# to print the date and/or time as per IETF RFC3349
date --rfc-3339=seconds
# to print the date and time within a custom string
date +"Today is %D and the time is %I:%M:%S"
UNIX time
On most UNIX systems, the current time is stored as the time that has passed since a specific moment. To simplify, the time is kept as a long integer, called the UNIX epoch. The moment that is universally accepted by all UNIX systems is January 1st 1970, 12:00:00 AM. This is called a UNIX timestamp and is recognized by all modern UNIX/Linux systems.
For example, if we wish to find the UNIX timestamp for January 1, 2022, we can use datethe command.
user@linux:~$ date -d"1 January 2022 12:00 AM" +%s
1640980800
dateTry to parse the string into a formatted date and time (or if no timestamp is specified, assume the time is 12:00 AM), and then print out the UNIX timestamp form of the given date and/or time. 1640980800 is the exact number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970, 12:00:00 AM.
The reverse is also possible, we take a UNIX timestamp and convert it to a date representation. To get our original date back, we can convert it by passing the UNIX timestamp as shown.
user@linux:~$ date -d @1640980800
Sat 01 Jan 2022 12:00:00 AM +04
If we wish, we can also include other parameters to format the date in a specific way, such as UTC or GMT, as described above.
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