bash date format

Bash Date

To format Bash Date to a required one, bash shell provides date command along with many format options.

Bash Date Command

Following is the syntax of date command

 

  $ date

 

Format Bash Date with Options

As already said, you can format the Bash Date. And the format you wish may contain spaces as well.

Date command accepts options if provided any

 

  $ date +<format-option><format-option>

 

To format date with spaces, use the syntax

 

  $ date '+<format-option><format-option> <format-option>'

 

List of Bash Date Formatting Options

Following are the list of available options for date command :

Format option	Part of Date	Desciption	Example Output
date +%a	Weekday	Name of weekday in short (like Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat)	Mon
date +%A	Weekday	Name of weekday in full (like Sunday, Monday, Tuesday)	Monday
date +%b	Month	Name of Month in short (like Jan, Feb, Mar )	Jan
date +%B	Month	Month name in full short (like January, February)	January
date +%d	Day	Day of month (e.g., 01)	04
date +%D	MM/DD/YY	Current Date; shown in MM/DD/YY	02/18/18
date +%F	YYYY-MM-DD	Date; shown in YYYY-MM-DD	2018-01-19
date +%H	Hour	Hour in 24-hour clock format	18
date +%I	Hour	Hour in 12-hour clock format	10
date +%j	Day	Day of year (001..366)	152
date +%m	Month	Number of month (01..12) (01 is January)	05
date +%M	Minutes	Minutes (00..59)	52
date +%S	Seconds	Seconds (00..59)	18
date +%N	Nanoseconds	Nanoseconds (000000000..999999999)	300231695
date +%T	HH:MM:SS	Time as HH:MM:SS (Hours in 24 Format)	18:55:42
date +%u	Day of Week	Day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday	7
date +%U	Week	Displays week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)	23
date +%Y	Year	Displays full year i.e. YYYY	2018
date +%Z	Timezone	Time zone abbreviation (Ex: IST, GMT)	IST

You may use any of the above-mentioned format options (first column) for the date command in the aforementioned syntax.

Examples

Bash Date Format MM-DD-YYYY

To format date in MM-DD-YYYY format, use the command  date +%m-%d-%Y .

#!/bin/bash

 

d=`date +%m-%d-%Y`

 

echo $d # 12-30-2017

Please observe the upper and lower case letters : %m for month, %d for day and %Y for year. %M would mean minutes.

Bash Date Format MM-YYYY

To format date in MM-YYYY format, use the command  date +%m-%Y .

#!/bin/bash

 

d=`date +%m-%Y`

 

echo $d # 12-2017

Bash Date Format: Weekday DD-Month, YYYY

To format date in MM-DD-YYYY format, use the command  date +%m-%d-%Y .

#!/bin/bash

 

d=`date '+%A %d-%B, %Y'`

 

echo $d #  Saturday 30-December, 2017