LKBEN11024: Howto show the time and date under linux and eventually format it as you wish


Symptom

You need to reformat the time for some bash scripting

Cause

none

Solution

To show the date and time you can use the date command.

date
Wed Jun 18 22:30:10 CEST 2008

 This is nice but sometimes you just want the date or time in another format. In this case you can use the date command with a format string.

This just shows the year:

date +'%Y'
2008

Here we get the year and the month and place a dot in between.

date +'%Y.%m'
2008.06

Here we  use everything:

date +'This is the date: %Y.%m.%d and now the time: %H:%M:%S'

This is the date: 2008.06.18 and now the time: 22:34:08

As you see you have plenty of flexibility. 

 

 

Disclaimer:

The information provided in this document is intended for your information only. Lubby makes no claims to the validity of this information. Use of this information is at own risk!

About the Author

Author: Wim Peeters - Keskon GmbH & Co. KG

Wim Peeters is electronics engineer with an additional master in IT and over 30 years of experience, including time spent in support, development, consulting, training and database administration. Wim has worked with SQL Server since version 6.5. He has developed in C/C++, Java and C# on Windows and Linux. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform.