date(1) User Commands date(1)NAMEdate - 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] [.SS]
/usr/xpg4/bin/date [-u] [ +format]
/usr/xpg4/bin/date [ -a [-]sss.fff]
/usr/xpg4/bin/date [-u] [ [mmdd] HHMM | mmddHHMM [cc] yy] [.SS]
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 is 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 repre‐
sents fractions of a second). This adjustment can be
positive or negative. The system's clock is sped up or
slowed down until it has drifted by the number of sec‐
onds specified. Only the super-user may adjust the
time.
-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 con‐
version specification for %C determined by whether
/usr/bin/date or /usr/xpg4/bin/date is used:
/usr/bin/date Locale's date and time repre‐
sentation. 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
SS Second number
cc Century (a year divided by 100 and truncated to an
integer) as a decimal number [00-99]. For example, cc
is 19 for the year 1988 and 20 for the year 2007.
yy Last two digits of the year number. If century (cc) is
not specified, then values in the range 69-99 shall
refer to years 1969 to 1999 inclusive, and values in
the range 00-68 shall refer to years 2000 to 2068,
inclusive.
The month, day, year number, and century may be omitted; the current
values are applied as defaults. For example, the following entry:
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 for‐
mat. The date command uses TZ to determine the correct time zone infor‐
mation; see environ(5).
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Generating Output
The following command:
example% date '+DATE: %m/%d/%y%nTIME:%H:%M:%S'
generates as output
DATE: 08/01/76
TIME: 14:45:05
Example 2: Setting the Current Time
The following command sets the current time to 12:34:56:
example# date 1234.56
Example 3: Setting Another Time and Date in Greenwich Mean Time
The following command sets the date to January 1st, 12:30 am, 2000:
example# date-u 010100302000
This is displayed as:
Thu Jan 01 00:30:00 GMT 2000
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables
that affect the execution of date: LANG, LC_ALL, 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.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
/usr/bin/date
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWcsu │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│CSI │enabled │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
/usr/xpg4/bin/date
┌─────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE │ ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Availability │SUNWxcu4 │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│CSI │enabled │
├─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│Interface Stability │Standard │
└─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOstrftime(3C), attributes(5), environ(5), standards(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.
Using the date command from within windowing environments to change the
date can lead to unpredictable results and is unsafe. It can also be
unsafe in the multi-user mode, that is, outside of a windowing system,
if the date is changed rapidly back and forth. The recommended method
of changing the date is 'date -a'.
Setting the system time or allowing the system time to progress beyond
03:14:07 UTC Jan 19, 2038 is not supported on Solaris.
SunOS 5.10 11 May 2004 date(1)
