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This article discusses the date Bash command used to obtain the system date/time and UNIX timestamp.

Get Timestamp Using date Command in Bash

The Linux terminal uses the date command to print the current date and time. The simplest version of the date command can be executed without any parameters.

The following is sample output from the date command, showing the current date and time on the system:

Thu Aug 25 08:43:54 UTC 2022

We can use different parameters in the date command to set a specific format for printing. For example, the command date +"%m-%d-%y"outputs the date in the following format:

08-25-22

In the above command, %m is used to represent the month, %d is used to represent the day, and %y is used to represent the year. Similarly, we can use many different formats of date commands.

We can only date +"%T"print the current time using command. %T is used to print time only.

date +"%T"The output is as follows:

09:01:00

Get UNIX timestamp

We can use the date command date +%sto display the UNIX timestamp using the command. date +%sThe output of is as follows:

1661417510

The output above is a UNIX timestamp.

Getting Date/Time in Bash Scripts

We can also use the command in Bash scripts date. Consider the following Bash script myscript.sh which displays the current date on the terminal:

#!/bin/bash
echo $(date)

When we execute the above script using ./myscript.sh, this will print the current date on the terminal.

Store a UNIX timestamp in a variable

We can also store the current date in any format using the date command in a variable.

Consider the following script:

#!/bin/bash
timestamp=$(date)
echo $(timestamp)

In the following script, timestamp is a variable in which we store the current date. When we execute the above script, it displays the value of timestamp variable on the terminal console due to echo command.

For example, we could use:

• timestamp=$(date +%s) stores the UNIX timestamp in the variable timestamp.
• timestamp=$(date +%T) stores the current time in the variable timestamp.
• timestamp=$(date +"%m-%d-%y") stores the current date in the variable timestamp.