date command in Linux

The most important command in linux is date. We can manipulate date commands output as we want. Suppose we need today's date as dd/mm/yyyy then we can implement like this:

Type command:

-bash-3.00$  date "+%d/%m/%Y"

07/09/2012

If you want current timestamp as yyyymmddHHMMSS then we can get it as:

-bash-3.00$ date "+%Y%m%d%H%M%S"

20120907080135

Date command prints or sets the system date and time. You can use following characters to get required result :

%%     a literal %

 %a     localeâs abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)

 %A     localeâs full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Saturday)

 %b     localeâs abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)

 %B     localeâs full month name, variable length (January..December)

 %c     localeâs date and time (Sat Nov 04 12:02:33 EST 1989)

 %C     century (year divided by 100 and truncated to an integer) [00-99]

 %d     day of month (01..31)

 %D     date (mm/dd/yy)

 %e     day of month, blank padded ( 1..31)

 %F     same as %Y-%m-%d

 %g     the 2-digit year corresponding to the %V week number

 %G     the 4-digit year corresponding to the %V week number

 %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     localeâs upper case AM or PM indicator (blank in many locales)

 %P     localeâs lower case am or pm indicator (blank in many locales)

%r     time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss [AP]M)

 %R     time, 24-hour (hh:mm)

 %s     seconds since â00:00:00 1970-01-01 UTCâ (a GNU extension)

 %S     second (00..60); the 60 is necessary to accommodate a leap second

 %t     a horizontal tab

 %T     time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss)

 %u     day of week (1..7);  1 represents Monday

 %U     week number of year with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)

 %V     week number of year with Monday as first day of week (01..53)

 %w     day of week (0..6);  0 represents Sunday

 %W     week number of year with Monday as first day of week (00..53)

 %x     localeâs date representation (mm/dd/yy)

 %X     localeâs time representation (%H:%M:%S)

 %y     last two digits of year (00..99)

 %Y     year (1970...)

 %z     RFC-2822 style numeric timezone (-0500) (a nonstandard extension)

 %Z     time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if no time zone is determinable

If you have any doubts regarding date command then write to me in comment.