Format Date For Display or Use In a Shell or Bash Script

date command displays current Date and Time in Shell/Bash Script.We need to use the date command with specific format to format date or time in Linux or Unix shell scripts.

This post shows you how to format date in Linux or Unix-based system.

Different usage with Output:

To get current data with Timestamp and time in Unix/Linux/Bash/Shell scripts.

date

Sun Mar 29 02:10:38 EDT 2015

date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S

20150329021052

date “+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%N”

2015-03-29 02:11:12.784721000

Bash Date Formats:

• Y= Year in YYYY format
• m=Month in MM format
• y=Year in YY format
• d=day in DD format
• H=Hour in HH format
• M=Minute in MM format
• S=Seconds in SS format
• N=Nano seconds in NNNNNNNN format

 

Subtracting dates with output:

date -d”1 day ago“    — for taking yesterdays date and time.

Sat Mar 28 02:15:32 EDT 2015

(current date is “Sun Mar 29 02:15:32 EDT 2015 “)

date -d”1 hour ago“    — for taking 1hour ago time

 Sun Mar 29 01:17:40 EDT 2015