DATEZONE(1)

🦋 DATEZONE(1) — user commands, but make it cute 🦋

yes bestie, this is the datezone page 💖 it lives in the User Commands section and it is genuinely one of the most useful little gremlins in the whole dateutils family. let's get into it.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

datezone — convert DATE/TIMEs between timezones. that's the whole job. she's focused, she's efficient, she slays 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

datezone [OPTION]...  [ZONENAME]... [DATE/TIME]...

🫶 DESCRIPTION 🫶

okay so the whole vibe is: you hand datezone some DATE/TIMEs and she converts them between timezones. if you don't give her a DATE/TIME at all, she just defaults to now, which is honestly so valid of her ⭐

DATE/TIME can also be one of these lil specials:

• now — interpreted as the current (UTC) time stamp
• time — the time part of the current (UTC) time stamp
• today — the current date (according to UTC)
• tomo[rrow] — tomorrow's date (according to UTC)
• y[ester]day — yesterday's date (according to UTC)

heads up on the date-only case: when DATE/TIME is a date (i.e. the time component is omitted) the result will show the timezone offset at the end of that day. 🌅

and on the time-only case: when DATE/TIME is a time (i.e. the date component is omitted) the conversion takes place on the date as specified by --base|-b, by default the current date. 🕰️

here's the recognized OPTIONs:

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -h, --help — display this help and exit. your classic "hello?? what do i do" button 🎀
• -V, --version — output version information and exit. little flex, honestly ✨
• -q, --quiet — Suppress message about date/time or zonename parser errors and fix-ups. The default is to print a warning or the fixed up value and return error code 2. (so if you keep it loud, you get the warning or the fixed-up value AND exit code 2 — she's telling on you 💀)
• -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. 🧚
• -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. (it's giving "try them in order, first one that parses wins" 🏆)
• --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. 🗺️
• --next — Show next transition from/to DST. ⏭️
• --prev — Show previous transition from/to DST. ⏮️

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💅 FORMAT SPECS 💅

Format specs in dateutils are similar to posix' strftime(). similar, not identical, bestie — do not come for me.

However, due to a broader range of supported calendars dateutils must employ different rules. 🌈

🍓 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 %p but in lowercase
• %S — The (range 00 to 60, 60 is for leap seconds) — yeah the doc literally just… trails off there before the range, so i am faithfully passing the mystery on to you 🙈
• %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 altogether
• th — Suffix, read and print ordinal numbers
• b — Suffix, treat days as business days

⚠️ By design dates before 1601-01-01 are not supported. like, not "bug", not "oopsie" — by DESIGN. so don't come crying to her about your 1599 receipts 💀

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/a

These designators can be used as output format string, moreover, lilian/ldn and julian/jdn can also be used as input format string. ✨

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

showing off time: look at her go, no cap.

$ datezone 2012-03-04T12:04:11
2012-03-04T12:04:11+00:00
$

$ datezone Europe/Berlin 2012-03-04T12:04:11
2012-03-04T13:04:11+01:00     Europe/Berlin
$

$ datezone 2012-03-04T12:04:11 UTC
2012-03-04T12:04:11+00:00     UTC
$

$ datezone Europe/Berlin Australia/Sydney 2012-01-01T14:04:00 2012-05-14T12:04:00
2012-01-01T15:04:00+01:00     Europe/Berlin
2012-01-02T01:04:00+11:00     Australia/Sydney
2012-05-14T14:04:00+02:00     Europe/Berlin
2012-05-14T22:04:00+10:00     Australia/Sydney
$

two zones, two timestamps, four lines of absolute slay 👑

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🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

Written by Sebastian Freundt <freundt@fresse.org> — thank you king 👑

💜 REPORTING BUGS 💜

Report bugs to: https://github.com/hroptatyr/dateutils/issues — go tell her, she wants to know 🫶

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

The full documentation for datezone is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and datezone programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info (dateutils)datezone

should give you access to the complete manual. 📖 (iykyk, info pages are a whole lifestyle)

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and that's the whole page bestie! 🦋 this was dateutils version 0.4.11, from November 2025 💖 stream datezone, tell your friends, convert your timezones responsibly, and remember — the offset is always in the output. periodt. 💅✨