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DATE(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual DATE(1P)
PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of this interface may differ (con-
sult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on
Linux.
NAME
date - write the date and time
SYNOPSIS
date [-u] [+format]
date [-u] mmddhhmm[[cc]yy]
DESCRIPTION
The date utility shall write the date and time to standard output or attempt to set the system date and time. By
default, the current date and time shall be written. If an operand beginning with '+' is specified, the output format of
date shall be controlled by the conversion specifications and other text in the operand.
OPTIONS
The date utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax
Guidelines.
The following option shall be supported:
-u Perform operations as if the TZ environment variable was set to the string "UTC0", or its equivalent historical
value of "GMT0" . Otherwise, date shall use the timezone indicated by the TZ environment variable or the system
default if that variable is unset or null.
OPERANDS
The following operands shall be supported:
+format
When the format is specified, each conversion specifier shall be replaced in the standard output by its corre-
sponding value. All other characters shall be copied to the output without change. The output shall always be
terminated with a <newline>.
Conversion Specifications
%a Locale's abbreviated weekday name.
%A Locale's full weekday name.
%b Locale's abbreviated month name.
%B Locale's full month name.
%c Locale's appropriate date and time representation.
%C Century (a year divided by 100 and truncated to an integer) as a decimal number [00,99].
%d Day of the month as a decimal number [01,31].
%D Date in the format mm/dd/yy.
%e Day of the month as a decimal number [1,31] in a two-digit field with leading space character fill.
%h A synonym for %b .
%H Hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number [00,23].
%I Hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number [01,12].
%j Day of the year as a decimal number [001,366].
%m Month as a decimal number [01,12].
%M Minute as a decimal number [00,59].
%n A <newline>.
%p Locale's equivalent of either AM or PM.
%r 12-hour clock time [01,12] using the AM/PM notation; in the POSIX locale, this shall be equivalent to %I : %M : %S
%p .
%S Seconds as a decimal number [00,60].
%t A <tab>.
%T 24-hour clock time [00,23] in the format HH:MM:SS.
%u Weekday as a decimal number [1,7] (1=Monday).
%U Week of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year preced-
ing the first Sunday shall be considered to be in week 0.
%V Week of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [01,53]. If the week containing January
1 has four or more days in the new year, then it shall be considered week 1; otherwise, it shall be the last week
of the previous year, and the next week shall be week 1.
%w Weekday as a decimal number [0,6] (0=Sunday).
%W Week of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) as a decimal number [00,53]. All days in a new year preced-
ing the first Monday shall be considered to be in week 0.
%x Locale's appropriate date representation.
%X Locale's appropriate time representation.
%y Year within century [00,99].
%Y Year with century as a decimal number.
%Z Timezone name, or no characters if no timezone is determinable.
%% A percent sign character.
See the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 7.3.5, LC_TIME for the conversion specifier values in
the POSIX locale.
Modified Conversion Specifications
Some conversion specifiers can be modified by the E and O modifier characters to indicate a different format or specifi-
cation as specified in the LC_TIME locale description (see the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section
7.3.5, LC_TIME). If the corresponding keyword (see era, era_year, era_d_fmt, and alt_digits in the Base Definitions vol-
ume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 7.3.5, LC_TIME) is not specified or not supported for the current locale, the unmod-
ified conversion specifier value shall be used.
%Ec Locale's alternative appropriate date and time representation.
%EC The name of the base year (period) in the locale's alternative representation.
%Ex Locale's alternative date representation.
%EX Locale's alternative time representation.
%Ey Offset from %EC (year only) in the locale's alternative representation.
%EY Full alternative year representation.
%Od Day of month using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%Oe Day of month using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%OH Hour (24-hour clock) using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%OI Hour (12-hour clock) using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%Om Month using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%OM Minutes using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%OS Seconds using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%Ou Weekday as a number in the locale's alternative representation (Monday = 1).
%OU Week number of the year (Sunday as the first day of the week) using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%OV Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week, rules corresponding to %V ), using the locale's
alternative numeric symbols.
%Ow Weekday as a number in the locale's alternative representation (Sunday = 0).
%OW Week number of the year (Monday as the first day of the week) using the locale's alternative numeric symbols.
%Oy Year (offset from %C ) in alternative representation.
mmddhhmm[[cc]yy]
Attempt to set the system date and time from the value given in the operand. This is only possible if the user has
appropriate privileges and the system permits the setting of the system date and time. The first mm is the month
(number); dd is the day (number); hh is the hour (number, 24-hour system); the second mm is the minute (number);
cc is the century and is the first two digits of the year (this is optional); yy is the last two digits of the
year and is optional. If century 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 current year is
the default if yy is omitted.
Note:
It is expected that in a future version of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 the default century inferred from a 2-digit year
will change. (This would apply to all commands accepting a 2-digit year as input.)
STDIN
Not used.
INPUT FILES
None.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of date:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions
volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for the precedence of international-
ization variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-
byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages written to stan-
dard error.
LC_TIME
Determine the format and contents of date and time strings written by date.
NLSPATH
Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .
TZ Determine the timezone in which the time and date are written, unless the -u option is specified. If the TZ vari-
able is unset or null and -u is not specified, an unspecified system default timezone is used.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
When no formatting operand is specified, the output in the POSIX locale shall be equivalent to specifying:
date "+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y"
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
None.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 The date was written successfully.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
Conversion specifiers are of unspecified format when not in the POSIX locale. Some of them can contain <newline>s in some
locales, so it may be difficult to use the format shown in standard output for parsing the output of date in those
locales.
The range of values for %S extends from 0 to 60 seconds to accommodate the occasional leap second.
Although certain of the conversion specifiers in the POSIX locale (such as the name of the month) are shown with initial
capital letters, this need not be the case in other locales. Programs using these fields may need to adjust the capital-
ization if the output is going to be used at the beginning of a sentence.
The date string formatting capabilities are intended for use in Gregorian-style calendars, possibly with a different
starting year (or years). The %x and %c conversion specifications, however, are intended for local representation; these
may be based on a different, non-Gregorian calendar.
The %C conversion specification was introduced to allow a fallback for the %EC (alternative year format base year); it
can be viewed as the base of the current subdivision in the Gregorian calendar. The century number is calculated as the
year divided by 100 and truncated to an integer; it should not be confused with the use of ordinal numbers for centuries
(for example, "twenty-first century".) Both the %Ey and %y can then be viewed as the offset from %EC and %C, respec-
tively.
The E and O modifiers modify the traditional conversion specifiers, so that they can always be used, even if the imple-
mentation (or the current locale) does not support the modifier.
The E modifier supports alternative date formats, such as the Japanese Emperor's Era, as long as these are based on the
Gregorian calendar system. Extending the E modifiers to other date elements may provide an implementation-defined exten-
sion capable of supporting other calendar systems, especially in combination with the O modifier.
The O modifier supports time and date formats using the locale's alternative numerical symbols, such as Kanji or Hindi
digits or ordinal number representation.
Non-European locales, whether they use Latin digits in computational items or not, often have local forms of the digits
for use in date formats. This is not totally unknown even in Europe; a variant of dates uses Roman numerals for the
months: the third day of September 1991 would be written as 3.IX.1991. In Japan, Kanji digits are regularly used for
dates; in Arabic-speaking countries, Hindi digits are used. The %d, %e, %H, %I, %m, %S, %U, %w, %W, and %y conversion
specifications always return the date and time field in Latin digits (that is, 0 to 9). The %O modifier was introduced to
support the use for display purposes of non-Latin digits. In the LC_TIME category in localedef, the optional alt_digits
keyword is intended for this purpose. As an example, assume the following (partial) localedef source:
alt_digits "";"I";"II";"III";"IV";"V";"VI";"VII";"VIII" \
"IX";"X";"XI";"XII"
d_fmt "%e.%Om.%Y"
With the above date, the command:
date "+%x"
would yield 3.IX.1991. With the same d_fmt, but without the alt_digits, the command would yield 3.9.1991.
EXAMPLES
1. The following are input/output examples of date used at arbitrary times in the POSIX locale:
$ date
Tue Jun 26 09:58:10 PDT 1990
$ date "+DATE: %m/%d/%y%nTIME: %H:%M:%S"
DATE: 11/02/91
TIME: 13:36:16
$ date "+TIME: %r"
TIME: 01:36:32 PM
2. Examples for Denmark, where the default date and time format is %a %d %b %Y %T %Z :
$ LANG=da_DK.iso_8859-1 date
ons 02 okt 1991 15:03:32 CET
$ LANG=da_DK.iso_8859-1 \
date "+DATO: %A den %e. %B %Y%nKLOKKEN: %H:%M:%S"
DATO: onsdag den 2. oktober 1991
KLOKKEN: 15:03:56
3. Examples for Germany, where the default date and time format is %a %d . %h . %Y, %T %Z :
$ LANG=De_DE.88591 date
Mi 02.Okt.1991, 15:01:21 MEZ
$ LANG=De_DE.88591 date "+DATUM: %A, %d. %B %Y%nZEIT: %H:%M:%S"
DATUM: Mittwoch, 02. Oktober 1991
ZEIT: 15:02:02
4. Examples for France, where the default date and time format is %a %d %h %Y %Z %T :
$ LANG=Fr_FR.88591 date
Mer 02 oct 1991 MET 15:03:32
$ LANG=Fr_FR.88591 date "+JOUR: %A %d %B %Y%nHEURE: %H:%M:%S"
JOUR: Mercredi 02 octobre 1991
HEURE: 15:03:56
RATIONALE
Some of the new options for formatting are from the ISO C standard. The -u option was introduced to allow portable
access to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The string "GMT0" is allowed as an equivalent TZ value to be compatible with
all of the systems using the BSD implementation, where this option originated.
The %e format conversion specification (adopted from System V) was added because the ISO C standard conversion specifica-
tions did not provide any way to produce the historical default date output during the first nine days of any month.
There are two varieties of day and week numbering supported (in addition to any others created with the locale-dependent
%E and %O modifier characters):
* The historical variety in which Sunday is the first day of the week and the weekdays preceding the first Sunday of the
year are considered week 0. These are represented by %w and %U . A variant of this is %W, using Monday as the first
day of the week, but still referring to week 0. This view of the calendar was retained because so many historical
applications depend on it and the ISO C standard strftime() function, on which many date implementations are based,
was defined in this way.
* The international standard, based on the ISO 8601:2000 standard where Monday is the first weekday and the algorithm
for the first week number is more complex: If the week (Monday to Sunday) containing January 1 has four or more days
in the new year, then it is week 1; otherwise, it is week 53 of the previous year, and the next week is week 1. These
are represented by the new conversion specifications %u and %V, added as a result of international comments.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
The System Interfaces volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, printf(), strftime()
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition, Standard for
Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 6, Copy-
right (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any
discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.open-
group.org/unix/online.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2003 DATE(1P)
