date—displays the date and time or sets the date

[ –u ] [ –a [ – ] sss.fff ] [ yymmddhhmm [ .ss ] ] [+format ]

Without arguments, the date command displays the date and time. If the command-line argument starts with a plus sign, the rest of the argument is used to format the output. If a percent sign is used, the next character is a formatting character to extract a particular part of the date, such as just the year or weekday. To set the date, the command-line argument is expressed in digits representing the year, month, day, hours, and minutes.

Example A.18.

1   date +%T

2   date +20%y

3   date "+It is now %m/%d /%y"

EXPLANATION