Manual page for date(1)
date - write the date and time
SYNOPSIS
/usr/bin/date [-u] [+format]
/usr/bin/date [-a [-]sss.fff]
/usr/bin/date [-u] [[mmdd]HHMM
| mmddHHMM[cc]yy]
/usr/xpg4/bin/date [-u] [+format]
/usr/xpg4/bin/date [-a [-]sss.fff]
/usr/xpg4/bin/date [-u] [[mmdd]HHMM
| mmddHHMM[cc]yy]
AVAILABILITY
/usr/bin/date
SUNWcsu
/usr/xpg4/bin/date
SUNWxcu4
DESCRIPTION
The
date
utility writes the date and time to standard output
or attempts to set the system date and time.
By default, the current date and time will be written.
Specifications of native language translations of
month and weekday names are supported.
The month and weekday names used for a language are based
on the locale specified by the environment variable
LC_TIME;
see
environ.5
The following is the default form for the "C" locale:
%a %b %e %T %Z %Y
for example,
Fri Dec 23 10:10:42 EST 1988
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
- -a [-]sss.fff
-
Slowly adjust the time by
sss.fff
seconds
(fff
represents fractions of a second).
This adjustment can be positive or negative.
The system's clock will be sped up or slowed down until it has drifted
by the number of seconds specified.
- -u
-
Display (or set) the date in Greenwich Mean Time
(GMT--universal time),
bypassing the normal conversion to
(or from) local time.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
- +format
-
If the argument begins with
+,
the output of
date
is the result of passing
format
and the current time to
strftime().
date
uses the conversion specifications listed on the
strftime.3c
manual page, with the conversion specification for
%C
determined by whether
/usr/bin/date
or
/usr/xpg4/bin/date
is used:
-
- /usr/bin/date
-
Locale's date and time representation.
This is the default output for
date.
- /usr/xpg4/bin/date
-
Century (a year divided by 100 and truncated to an integer) as a
decimal number [00-99].
The string is always terminated with a
NEWLINE.
An argument containing blanks must be quoted; see the
EXAMPLES
section.
- mm
-
Month number
- dd
-
Day number in the month
- HH
-
Hour number (24 hour system)
- MM
-
Minute number
- cc
-
Century minus one
- yy
-
Last 2 digits of the year number
The month, day, year, and century may be omitted;
the current values are applied as defaults.
For example:
-
date 10080045
-
sets the date to Oct 8, 12:45 a.m.
The current year is the default because no year is supplied.
The system operates in GMT.
date
takes care of the conversion to and from
local standard and daylight time.
Only the super-user may change the date.
After successfully setting the date and time,
date
displays the new date according
to the default format.
The
date
command uses
TZ
to determine the correct time zone information;
see
environ.5
EXAMPLES
The command
-
example% date '+DATE: %m/%d/%y%nTIME: %H:%M:%S'
generates as output:
-
DATE: 08/01/76
TIME: 14:45:05
ENVIRONMENT
See
environ.5
for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect
the execution of
date:
LC_CTYPE,
LC_TIME,
LC_MESSAGES,
and
NLSPATH.
- TZ
-
Determine the timezone in which the time and date are written,
unless the
-u
option is specified. If the
TZ
variable is not set and the
-u
is not specified, the system default timezone is used.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned:
- 0
-
Successful completion.
- >0
-
An error occurred.
SEE ALSO
strftime.3c
environ.5
DIAGNOSTICS
- no permission
-
You are not the super-user and you tried to change the date.
- bad conversion
-
The date set is syntactically incorrect.
NOTES
If you attempt to set the current date to one of the dates that the standard and alternate time zones change
(for example, the date that daylight time is starting or ending),
and you attempt to set the time to a time in the interval
between the end of standard time and the beginning of the alternate time
(or the end of the alternate time and the beginning of standard time),
the results are unpredictable.
Created by unroff & hp-tools.
© by Hans-Peter Bischof. All Rights Reserved (1997).
Last modified 21/April/97
