DATE(1)

📦 version 0.12.0, in arch rolling

✨ NAME ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to date(1) — manual name date(1), the “Print or set the system date and time” icon 👑. That’s literally the whole job: peek at the clock or set it, and this page is your group chat with all the deets.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]...
date [OPTION]... [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

FORMAT controls the output. Interpreted sequences are — yes, all of them, we are not skipping a single one 💅:

  • %% — a literal % (example: %) 💖
  • %a — locale’s abbreviated weekday name (example: Sun) 🌸
  • %A — locale’s full weekday name (example: Sunday) 🌈
  • %b — locale’s abbreviated month name (example: Jan) 🎀
  • %B — locale’s full month name (example: January) 🦋
  • %c — locale’s date and time (example: Thu Mar 3 23:05:25 2005) ⭐
  • %C — century; like %Y, except omit last two digits (example: 20) 💜
  • %d — day of month (example: 01) 💅
  • %D — date; same as %m/%d/%y (example: 12/31/99) ✨
  • %e — day of month, space padded; same as %_d (example: 3) 🫶
  • %F — full date; same as %Y-%m-%d (example: 2005-03-03) 💖
  • %g — last two digits of year of ISO week number (see %G) (example: 05) 🌟
  • %G — year of ISO week number (see %V); normally useful only with %V (example: 2005) 👑
  • %h — same as %b (example: Jan) 🎀
  • %H — hour (00..23) (example: 23) 🕰️
  • %I — hour (01..12) (example: 11) ⏰
  • %j — day of year (001..366) (example: 062) 🍓
  • %k — hour, space padded ( 0..23); same as %_H (example: 3) 🌸
  • %l — hour, space padded ( 1..12); same as %_I (example: 9) 💫
  • %m — month (01..12) (example: 03) 💜
  • %M — minute (00..59) (example: 30) 💅
  • %n — a newline (example: \n) 🦋
  • %N — nanoseconds (000000000..999999999) (example: 123456789) ⚡
  • %p — locale’s equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known (example: PM) 🌸
  • %P — like %p, but lower case (example: pm) 🎀
  • %q — quarter of year (1..4) (example: 1) 🌈
  • %r — locale’s 12-hour clock time (example: 11:11:04 PM) ⏱️
  • %R — 24-hour hour and minute; same as %H:%M (example: 23:30) 🕚
  • %s — seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (example: 1615432800) 🔥
  • %S — second (00..60) (example: 30) 💖
  • %t — a tab (example: \t) 🫶
  • %T — time; same as %H:%M:%S (example: 23:30:30) ⭐
  • %u — day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday (example: 4) 💅
  • %U — week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53) (example: 10) 🌸
  • %V — ISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53) (example: 12) 🎀
  • %w — day of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday (example: 4) 🦋
  • %W — week number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53) (example: 11) 💜
  • %x — locale’s date representation (example: 03/03/2005) ✨
  • %X — locale’s time representation (example: 23:30:30) ⏰
  • %y — last two digits of year (00..99) (example: 05) 🌈
  • %Y — year (example: 2005) 👑
  • %z — +hhmm numeric time zone (example: -0400) 💫
  • %:z — +hh:mm numeric time zone (example: -04:00) 🌟
  • %::z — +hh:mm:ss numeric time zone (example: -04:00:00) 💖
  • %:::z — numeric time zone with : to necessary precision (example: -04, +05:30) 🫶
  • %Z — alphabetic time zone abbreviation (example: EDT) 🌸

By default, date pads numeric fields with zeroes.

The following optional flags may follow %:

  • - (hyphen) — do not pad the field 💅
  • _ (underscore) — pad with spaces 🌸
  • 0 (zero) — pad with zeros 🎀
  • ^ — use upper case if possible 💜
  • # — use opposite case if possible 🦋

After any flags comes an optional field width, as a decimal number; then an optional modifier, which is either:

  • E — use the locale’s alternate representations if available ✨
  • O — use the locale’s alternate numeric symbols if available 🌈

Examples because we love a demo 💖

Convert seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 UTC) to a date:

date --date='@2147483647'

Show the time on the west coast of the US (use tzselect(1) to find TZ):

TZ='America/Los_Angeles' date

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Print or set the system date and time. That’s it. That’s the assignment, bestie — either check the clock or set it, and the rest of this page is the how 💅.

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -d, --date <STRING> — display time described by STRING, not 'now' ⏰
  • -f, --file <DATEFILE> — like --date; once for each line of DATEFILE 📄
  • -I, --iso-8601 [<FMT>] — output date/time in ISO 8601 format. FMT='date' for date only (the default), 'hours', 'minutes', 'seconds', or 'ns' for date and time to the indicated precision. Example: 2006-08-14T02:34:56-06:00 🌟
    • Possible values:
      • date
      • hours
      • minutes
      • seconds
      • ns
  • --resolution — output the available resolution of timestamps. Example: 0.000000001 ⚡
  • -R, --rfc-email — output date and time in RFC 5322 format. Example: Mon, 14 Aug 2006 02:34:56 -0600 📬
  • --rfc-3339 <FMT> — output date/time in RFC 3339 format. FMT='date', 'seconds', or 'ns' for date and time to the indicated precision. Example: 2006-08-14 02:34:56-06:00 🕰️
    • Possible values:
      • date
      • seconds
      • ns
  • --debug — annotate the parsed date, and warn about questionable usage to stderr 🚨
  • -r, --reference <FILE> — display the last modification time of FILE 📁
  • -s, --set <STRING> — set time described by STRING ⏳
  • -u, --universal — print or set Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) 🌍
  • -h, --help — Print help 🆘
  • -V, --version — Print version 🏷️
  • [format] — the [format] slot at the end, periodt 💅

🎀 VERSION 🎀

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0 — that’s the version, bestie ✨.

💖 that’s the whole page, bestie. Signing off with source/version v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0 and the date 2026-09-17 — mwah 💋

📦 where this page comes from