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RK

Rajan Kumar

Founder at HackersFriend Updated April 24, 2022, 6:09 p.m. ⋅ 2904 views

How to format date output in Linux bash script


To get current timestamp in bash you can use:

timestamp=$(date +%s)

This will give you seconds since UNIX epoch.

For other formatting of date in Linux bash you can refer to below table:

        Format/result           |       Bash Command         |          Code
--------------------------------+----------------------------+------------------------------
YYYY-MM-DD                      | date -I                    | $(date -I)
YYYY-MM-DD_hh:mm:ss             | date +%F_%T                | $(date +%F_%T)
YYYYMMDD_hhmmss                 | date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S        | $(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S)
YYYYMMDD_hhmmss (UTC version)   | date --utc +%Y%m%d_%H%M%SZ | $(date --utc +%Y%m%d_%H%M%SZ)
YYYYMMDD_hhmmss (with local TZ) | date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S%Z      | $(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S%Z)
YYYYMMSShhmmss                  | date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S         | $(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)
YYYYMMSShhmmssnnnnnnnnn         | date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S%N       | $(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S%N)
YYMMDD_hhmmss                   | date +%y%m%d_%H%M%S        | $(date +%y%m%d_%H%M%S)
Seconds since UNIX epoch:       | date +%s                   | $(date +%s)
Nanoseconds only:               | date +%N                   | $(date +%N)
Nanoseconds since UNIX epoch:   | date +%s%N                 | $(date +%s%N)
ISO8601 UTC timestamp           | date --utc +%FT%TZ         | $(date --utc +%FT%TZ)
ISO8601 UTC timestamp + ms      | date --utc +%FT%T.%3NZ     | $(date --utc +%FT%T.%3NZ)
ISO8601 Local TZ timestamp      | date +%FT%T%Z              | $(date +%FT%T%Z)
YYYY-MM-DD (Short day)          | date +%F\(%a\)             | $(date +%F\(%a\))
YYYY-MM-DD (Long day)           | date +%F\(%A\)             | $(date +%F\(%A\))


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