bash how to format date

The easiest way to get a date in YYYY-MM-DD is follows:

date -I

Output: 2016-06-07

The parameter “I” tells the date command, the ISO date format is required.

Of course, you can also use your own definition. %Y means year, %m means month, and %d means day:

date +%Y-%m-%d

Output: 2016-06-07, the same.

If you want to display also hours:minutes:second, let's do:

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

Output: 2016-06-07:17:02:19

You fill the variable date as follows:

DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d:%H:%M:%S`

Here are some examples of format control:

• %u - day of week(1..7), 1 is Monday
• %w - day of week(0..6), 0 is Sunday
• %U - week number of year, with Sunday as the first day of the week (00..53)
• %V - week number of year, with Monday as the first day of the week (00..53)
• %s - seconds since 1.1.1970 UTC
• %Y - year
• %y - last two digits of year(00..99)
• %r - locale's 12-hour clock time
• %R - 24-hour hour and minute

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