Display date on linux

Display Date And Time In Linux

H ow do I display date and time in Linux using the command line and GUI options?

To display date and time under Linux operating system using command prompt use the date command. It can also display the current time / date in the given FORMAT. We can set the system date and time as root user too.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	Linux with the terminal application
Est. reading time	3 minutes

Syntax

Open a terminal and type the following command:
date

You can format the date as follows in dd-mm-yy format:
date +»%d-%m-%y»

Simply display the current time:
date «+%T»

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To print the date of the day before yesterday, run:
date —date=’2 days ago’
Want to see the day of year of Christmas in the current year? Try:
date —date=’25 Dec’ +%j
Display the current full month name and the day of the month:
date ‘+%B %d’

Display date and time in Linux using the timedatectl

Most modern Linux distro with systemd use the timedatectl command. It is used to query and change the system clock and its settings, and enable or disable time synchronization services. All you have to do is type the following command:
$ timedatectl

TZ environment variable

The TZ environment tells Linux what time zone you are in. Many times when you want to change your time zone temporarily. For example, you might want to print the current date and time in “America/Los_Angeles” timezone even though you are in “Europe/London”. So we can set TZ, give a command like as follows when using TCSH/CSH:
setenv TZ timezone
For BASH/KSH/SH (see export command:
TZ=timezone; export TZ
Another option:
TZ=»America/Los_Angeles» date
TZ=»Asia/Tokyo» date
Use the following command to print a list of all timezones:
timedatectl list-timezones
timedatectl list-timezones | more
## filter out data using the grep command/egrep command ##
timedatectl list-timezones | grep -i Hong_kong
timedatectl list-timezones | grep -i paris
timedatectl list-timezones | grep -E -i ‘paris|london|kolkata’

The TZ Environment Variable on Linux

GUI Tool: Time Administration

The Time Administration Tool allows you to set the time, date and timezone of your system, as well as setting any time server to synchronize your local time server. Type the following command to start time admin tool:
sudo time-admin
## OR ##
time-admin

Fig.01: Linux Date and Time Administration Tool

How to change date and time settings with Gnome based Linux desktop

First, you need to Settings in Activities and then click Details in the sidebar. Make sure you click Date & Time in the sidebar to open the panel:

Conclusion

In this quick tutorial, you learned about the date command that you can use to see or change the date/time under Linux operating systems. We further explained how to use the GUI tools too. The date command has many more options. See man page by typing the following man command:
$ man date

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date command in Linux with examples

date command is used to display the system date and time. date command is also used to set date and time of the system. By default the date command displays the date in the time zone on which unix/linux operating system is configured.You must be the super-user (root) to change the date and time.

Syntax:

Options with Examples
1: date (no option) : With no options, the date command displays the current date and time, including the abbreviated day name, abbreviated month name, day of the month, the time separated by colons, the time zone name, and the year.

Note : Here unix system is configured in pacific daylight time.

2:-u Option: Displays the time in GMT(Greenwich Mean Time)/UTC(Coordinated Universal Time )time zone.

3: –date or -d Option: Displays the given date string in the format of date. But this will not affect the system’s actual date and time value.Rather it uses the date and time given in the form of string.
Syntax:

4:Using –date option for displaying past dates:

• Date and time of 2 years ago.

• Date and time of 5 seconds ago.

• Date and time of previous day.

• Date and time of 2 months ago.

• Date and time of 10 days ago.

5:Using –date option for displaying future date:

• Date and time of upcoming particular week day.

• Date and time after two days.

• Date and time of next day.

• Date and time after 1 year on the current day.

6:-s or –set Option: To set the system date and time -s or –set option is used.
Syntax:

7:–file or -f Option: This is used to display the date string present at each line of file in the date and time format.This option is similar to –date option but the only difference is that in –date we can only give one date string but in a file we can give multiple date strings at each line.
Syntax:

8:-r Option: This is used to display the last modified timestamp of a datefile .
Syntax:

We can modify the timestamp of a datefile by using touch command.

9: List of Format specifiers used with date command:

Syntax:

Examples:

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How To Format Date For Display or Use In a Shell Script

H ow do I format the date to display on the screen on for my shell scripts as per my requirements on Linux or Unix like operating systems?

You need to use the standard date command to format date or time in Linux or Unix shell scripts. You can use the same command with the shell script. This page shows how to format date in Linux or Unix-based system.

Tutorial details
Difficulty level	Easy
Root privileges	No
Requirements	date on Linux/Unix
Est. reading time	7 minutes

Linux Syntax To Format Date For Display On Screen

The syntax is as follows for the GNU/date and BSD/date command:
date +FORMAT
date +»%FORMAT»
date +»%FORMAT%FORMAT»
date +»%FORMAT-%FORMAT»
An operand with a leading plus ( + ) sign signals a user-defined format string which specifies the format in which to display the date and time. The following examples are tested on GNU/Linux, Apple OS X Unix, and FreeBSD unix operating system.

Task: Display date in mm-dd-yy format

Open a terminal and type the following date command:
$ date +»%m-%d-%y»
Sample outputs:

To turn on 4 digit year display:
$ date +»%m-%d-%Y»
Just display date as mm/dd/yy format:
$ date +»%D»

Task: Display time only

Type the following command:
$ date +»%T»
Sample outputs:

To display locale’s 12-hour clock time, enter:
$ date +»%r»
Sample outputs:

To display time in HH:MM format, type:
$ date +»%H-%M»
Sample outputs:

How do I save time/date format to the shell variable?

Simply type the following command at the shell prompt to get the current date in MM-DD-YYYY format:
$ NOW=$(date +»%m-%d-%Y»)
To display a variable use the following simple commands to output on screen under Linux and UNIX using the printf command/echo command:
$ echo «$NOW»
printf «%s\n» $NOW

A sample shell script

A complete list of FORMAT control characters supported by the GNU/date command

It can be the combination of any one of the following:

Table 1 – FORMAT controls the output for Linux

%FORMAT String	Description
%%	a literal %
%a	locale’s abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Sun)
%A	locale’s full weekday name (e.g., Sunday)
%b	locale’s abbreviated month name (e.g., Jan)
%B	locale’s full month name (e.g., January)
%c	locale’s date and time (e.g., Thu Mar 3 23:05:25 2005)
%C	century; like %Y, except omit last two digits (e.g., 21)
%d	day of month (e.g, 01)
%D	date; same as %m/%d/%y
%e	day of month, space padded; same as %_d
%F	full date; same as %Y-%m-%d
%g	last two digits of year of ISO week number (see %G)
%G	year of ISO week number (see %V); normally useful only with %V
%h	same as %b
%H	hour (00..23)
%I	hour (01..12)
%j	day of year (001..366)
%k	hour ( 0..23)
%l	hour ( 1..12)
%m	month (01..12)
%M	minute (00..59)
%n	a newline
%N	nanoseconds (000000000..999999999)
%p	locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known
%P	like %p, but lower case
%r	locale’s 12-hour clock time (e.g., 11:11:04 PM)
%R	24-hour hour and minute; same as %H:%M
%s	seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
%S	second (00..60)
%t	a tab
%T	time; same as %H:%M:%S
%u	day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday
%U	week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
%V	ISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53)
%w	day of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday
%W	week number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
%x	locale’s date representation (e.g., 12/31/99)
%X	locale’s time representation (e.g., 23:13:48)
%y	last two digits of year (00..99)
%Y	year
%z	+hhmm numeric timezone (e.g., -0400)
%:z	+hh:mm numeric timezone (e.g., -04:00)
%::z	+hh:mm:ss numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00:00)
%. z	numeric time zone with : to necessary precision (e.g., -04, +05:30)
%Z	alphabetic time zone abbreviation (e.g., EDT)

A complete list of FORMAT control characters supported by the BSD/date command

The following works on Apple macOS/OS X, FreeBSD and *BSD version of the date command:

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Table 2 – BSD/date command

%FORMAT String	Description
%A	is replaced by national representation of the full weekday name.
%a	is replaced by national representation of the abbreviated weekday name.
%B	is replaced by national representation of the full month name.
%b	is replaced by national representation of the abbreviated month name.
%C	is replaced by (year / 100) as decimal number; single digits are preceded by a zero.
%c	is replaced by national representation of time and date.
%D	is equivalent to “%m/%d/%y”.
%d	is replaced by the day of the month as a decimal number (01-31).
%E* %O*	POSIX locale extensions. The sequences %Ec %EC %Ex %EX %Ey %EY %Od %Oe %OH %OI %Om %OM %OS %Ou %OU %OV %Ow %OW %Oy are supposed to provide alternate representations. Additionally %OB implemented to represent alternative months names (used standalone, without day mentioned).
%e	is replaced by the day of the month as a decimal number (1-31); single digits are preceded by a blank.
%G	is replaced by a year as a decimal number with century. This year is the one that contains the greater part of the week (Monday as the first day of the week).
%g	is replaced by the same year as in “%G”, but as a decimal number without century (00-99).
%H	is replaced by the hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number (00-23).
%h	the same as %b.
%I	is replaced by the hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number (01-12).
%j	is replaced by the day of the year as a decimal number (001-366).
%k	is replaced by the hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number (0-23); single digits are preceded by a blank.
%l	is replaced by the hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number (1-12); single digits are preceded by a blank.
%M	is replaced by the minute as a decimal number (00-59).
%m	is replaced by the month as a decimal number (01-12).
%n	is replaced by a newline.
%O*	the same as %E*.
%p	is replaced by national representation of either “ante meridiem” (a.m.) or “post meridiem” (p.m.) as appropriate.
%R	is equivalent to “%H:%M”.
%r	is equivalent to “%I:%M:%S %p”.
%S	is replaced by the second as a decimal number (00-60).
%s	is replaced by the number of seconds since the Epoch, UTC (see mktime(3)).
%T	is equivalent to “%H:%M:%S”.
%t	is replaced by a tab.
%U	is replaced by the week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (00-53).
%u	is replaced by the weekday (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (1-7).
%V	is replaced by the week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (01-53). If the week containing January 1 has four or more days in the new year, then it is week 1; otherwise it is the last week of the previous year, and the next week is week 1.
%v	is equivalent to “%e-%b-%Y”.
%W	is replaced by the week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (00-53).
%w	is replaced by the weekday (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number (0-6).
%X	is replaced by national representation of the time.
%x	is replaced by national representation of the date.
%Y	is replaced by the year with century as a decimal number.
%y	is replaced by the year without century as a decimal number (00-99).
%Z	is replaced by the time zone name.
%z	is replaced by the time zone offset from UTC; a leading plus sign stands for east of UTC, a minus sign for west of UTC, hours and minutes follow with two digits each and no delimiter between them (common form for RFC 822 date headers).
%+	is replaced by national representation of the date and time (the format is similar to that produced by date(1)).
%-*	GNU libc extension. Do not do any padding when performing numerical outputs.
%_*	GNU libc extension. Explicitly specify space for padding.
%0*	GNU libc extension. Explicitly specify zero for padding.
%%	is replaced by %.

A sample date session

I am running commands on macOS/OS X and FreeBSD:

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