DATEROUND(1)
✨ DATEROUND(1) — the dateround era ✨
okay so bestie, you found the manual for dateround and I am so glad you're here 💖 it lives in the User Commands section of the dateutils universe and it is genuinely iconic. let's get into it 🫶
🌸 NAME 🌸
dateround — Round DATE/TIME to the next occurrence of RNDSPEC.
🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀
dateround [OPTION]... [DATE/TIME] RNDSPEC...💅 DESCRIPTION 💅
Round DATE/TIME to the next occurrence of RNDSPEC. that's the whole vibe, periodt.
If DATE/TIME is omitted a stream of date/times is read from stdin. (yes, she reads from the stream, she's flexible like that ✨)
DATE/TIME can also be one of the following specials:
now— interpreted as the current (UTC) time stamptime— the time part of the current (UTC) time stamptoday— the current date (according to UTC)tomo[rrow]— tomorrow's date (according to UTC)y[ester]day— yesterday's date (according to UTC)
- RNDSPECs can be month names (Jan, Feb, ...), weekday names (Sun, Mon, ...), numerals suffixed with y, q, mo, d, bd, h, m, or s, possibly prefixed with a dash (
-) to indicate the rounding direction is downwards. - Suffixed RNDSPECs may additionally be prefixed with a slash (
/) to indicate that rounding to a multiple of RNDSPEC is desired. Co-class rounding.
In the first case, rounding affects the named element in the specified date or date/time and more significant elements by setting this element to the specified value and adjusting the more significant elements such that the result is greater (younger) or equal to the input (or strictly greater when -n|--next is given) for positive values, and less (older) or equal (unless -n|--next is given) for named elements that are prefixed with dash (-). In either case, less significant elements, e.g. subdivisions of the named element and their subdivisions are left unchanged.
That isdateround 2019-01-28T12:04:00 +6will yield2019-02-06T12:04:00Similarlydateround -n 2019-01-28T12:04:00 -- -Octwill yield2018-10-28T12:04:00
In the second case, rounding is more like rounding decimal fractions to negative infinity. The time axis is partitioned by multiples of the named element, and the oldest date or datetime is returned that is greater (younger) (or equal if -n|--next is omitted) than the specified date or date/time, when rounding down (- prefix) the oldest date or datetime is returned that is less (older) than the specified date or datetime.
That isdateround 2019-01-28T12:04:00 /1ywill yield2020-01-01T00:00:00Similarlydateround 2019-01-28T12:04:00 /-30mwill yield2019-01-28T12:00:00
The superdivision of years are millennia, i.e. there's 1000 years, 500 biennia, 100 decades, etc. in a millennium.
Multiple RNDSPECs are evaluated left to right. no cap, order matters fr fr.
Note that rounding isn't commutative, e.g.
dateround 2012-03-01 Sat Sep→2012-09-03- vs.
dateround 2012-03-01 Sep Sat→2012-09-01
Note that non-numeric strings prefixed with a - conflict with the command line options and a separating -- has to be used. don't forget the --, she's shy and needs the buffer 😭
Recognized OPTIONs:
-h,--help— Print help and exit-V,--version— Print version and exit-q,--quiet— Suppress message about date/time and duration parser errors and fix-ups. The default is to print a warning or the fixed up value and return error code2.-f,--format=STRING— Output format. This can either be a specifier string (similar tostrftime()'s FMT) or the name of a calendar.-i,--input-format=STRING...— Input format, can be used multiple times. Each date/time will be passed to the input format parsers in the order they are given, if a date/time can be read successfully with a given input format specifier string, that value will be used.-b,--base=DT— For underspecified input use DT as a fallback to fill in missing fields. Also used for ambiguous format specifiers to position their range on the absolute time line. Must be a date/time in ISO8601 format. If omitted defaults to the current date/time.-e,--backslash-escapes— Enable interpretation of backslash escapes in the output and input format specifier strings.-S,--sed-mode— Copy parts from the input before and after a matching date/time. Note that all occurrences of date/times within a line will be processed.-E,--empty-mode— Empty lines that cannot be parsed.--locale=LOCALE— Format results according to LOCALE, this would only affect month and weekday names.--from-locale=LOCALE— Interpret dates on stdin or the command line as coming from the locale LOCALE, this would only affect month and weekday names as input formats have to be specified explicitly.--from-zone=ZONE— Interpret dates on stdin or the command line as coming from the time zone ZONE.-z,--zone=ZONE— Convert dates printed on stdout to time zone ZONE, default: UTC.-n,--next— Always round to a different date or time.
🌈 FORMAT SPECS 🌈
Format specs in dateutils are similar to posix' strftime().
However, due to a broader range of supported calendars dateutils must employ different rules. (she's built different, lowkey 👑)
🦋 Date specs 🦋
%a— The abbreviated weekday name%A— The full weekday name%_a— The weekday name shortened to a single character (MTWRFAS)%b— The abbreviated month name%B— The full month name%_b— The month name shortened to a single character (FGHJKMNQUVXZ)%c— The count of the weekday within the month (range 00 to 05)%C— The count of the weekday within the year (range 00 to 53)%d— The day of the month, 2 digits (range 00 to 31)%D— The day of the year, 3 digits (range 000 to 366)%F— Equivalent to%Y-%m-%d(ymd's canonical format)%g— ISO week date year without the century (range 00 to 99)%G— ISO week date year including the century%j— Equivalent to%D%m— The month in the current calendar (range 00 to 12)%Q— The quarter of the year (range Q1 to Q4)%q— The number of the quarter (range 01 to 04)%s— The number of seconds since the Epoch.%u— The weekday as number (range 01 to 07, Sunday being 07)%U— The week count, day of week is Sun (range 00 to 53)%V— The ISO week count, day of week is Mon (range 01 to 53)%w— The weekday as number (range 00 to 06, Sunday being 00)%W— The week count, day of week is Mon (range 00 to 53)%y— The year without a century (range 00 to 99)%Y— The year including the century%_y— The year shortened to a single digit%Z— The zone offset in hours and minutes (HH:MM) with a preceding sign (+for offsets east of UTC,-for offsets west of UTC)%Od— The day as roman numerals%Om— The month as roman numerals%Oy— The two digit year as roman numerals%OY— The year including the century as roman numerals%rs— In time systems whose Epoch is different from the unix Epoch, this selects the number of seconds since then.%rY— In calendars with years that don't coincide with the Gregorian years, this selects the calendar's year.%dth— The day of the month as an ordinal number, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.%mth— The month of the year as an ordinal number, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.%db— The business day of the month (since last month's ultimo)%dB— Number of business days until this month's ultimo
🍓 Time specs 🍓
%H— The hour of the day using a 24h clock, 2 digits (range 00 to 23)%I— The hour of the day using a 12h clock, 2 digits (range 01 to 12)%M— The minute (range 00 to 59)%N— The nanoseconds (range 000000000 to 999999999)%p— The string AM or PM, noon is PM and midnight is AM.%P— Like%pbut in lowercase%S— The (range 00 to 60, 60 is for leap seconds)%T— Equivalent to%H:%M:%S
🧚 General specs 🧚
%n— A newline character%t— A tab character%%— A literal%character
💜 Modifiers 💜
%O— Modifier to turn decimal numbers into Roman numerals%r— Modifier to turn units into real units%0— Modifier to turn on zero prefixes%SPC— Modifier to turn on space prefixes%-— Modifier to turn off prefixes altogetherth— Suffix, read and print ordinal numbersb— Suffix, treat days as business days
By design dates before 1601-01-01 are not supported. she said no thanks to the old days 💀
For conformity here is a list of calendar designators and their corresponding format string:
ymd %Y-%m-%d
ymcw %Y-%m-%c-%w
ywd %rY-W%V-%u
bizda %Y-%m-%db
lilian n/a
ldn n/a
julian n/a
jdn n/a
matlab n/a
mdn n/aThese designators can be used as output format string, moreover, lilian/ldn and julian/jdn can also be used as input format string.
⭐ SPECIFYING DURATIONS ⭐
Some tools (dateadd, dateseq) need durations as their input. Durations are generally incompatible with input formats as specified by -i|--input-format and (at the moment) the input syntax is fixed.
The general format is +-Nunit where + or - is the sign, N a number, and unit the unit as discussed below.
Units:
s— secondsm— minutesh— hoursrs— real-life seconds, as in including leap transitionsd— daysb— business daysmo— monthsy— years
For historical reasons, we used to accept m in the context of date-only input as a qualifier for months. As of 0.4.4, this is no longer the case. rip to that era 🙈
🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥
$ dateround 2012-03-01 2
2012-03-02
$
$ dateround -n 2012-03-01 1
2012-04-01
$
$ dateround 17:05:00 5m
17:05:00
$ dateround 17:04:00 /5m
17:05:00
$
$ dateround -n 17:04:00 4m
18:04:00
$ dateround -n 17:04:00 /1m
17:05:00
$look at her go 😭✨
👑 AUTHOR 👑
Written by Sebastian Freundt <freundt@fresse.org>
🌸 REPORTING BUGS 🌸
Report bugs to: https://github.com/hroptatyr/dateutils/issues
💖 SEE ALSO 💖
The full documentation for dateround is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and dateround programs are properly installed at your site, the command
info (dateutils)dateroundshould give you access to the complete manual.
and that's the whole page bestie, you ate 💅 this was dateutils version 0.4.11, dated November 2025 — go forth and round, the rounding is giving main character energy fr fr 🦋✨
📦 where this page comes from
- ubuntu resolute: dateutils 0.4.11-2 · BSD-3-Clause
- ubuntu stonking: dateutils 0.4.11-2 · BSD-3-Clause
- 💖 girlified by deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms