Often you may want to format a datetime in a specific way in Bash.
The easiest way to so do is by using the + command followed by the specific date format:
date +'%Y-%m-%d'
This particular example uses the date command to return the current date and time, then uses the + operator to format the resulting datetime as %Y-%m-%d where:
- %Y: Returns the year
- %m: Returns the month
- %d: Returns the day
Note that you can also use the following syntax to include the hours, minutes and seconds in the datetime:
date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
This particular example includes the time component of the current datetime where:
- %H: Returns the hours
- %M: Returns the minutes
- %S: Returns the seconds
The following examples show how to use these methods in practice.
Example 1: Format DateTime Using YYYY-MM-DD
We can use the following syntax to return the current date in Bash using a YYYY-MM-DD format:
date +'%Y-%m-%d'
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
This returns 2024-07-22, which represents the current date when this article is being written.
Note that you can specify any format that you’d like using the + operator.
For example, you could instead use the following syntax to return the current date using a MM/DD/YYYY format:
date +'%m/%d%Y'
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this returns 07/22/2024, which represents the current date in a MM/DD/YYYY format.
Example 2: Format DateTime Using YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
We can use the following syntax to return the current date in Bash using a YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format:
date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
This returns 2024-07-22 10:28:58, which represents the current date and time when this article is being written.
Feel free to use any datetime format that you’d like by using the + operator.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Bash:
How to Compare Dates in Bash
How to Calculate Date Difference in Bash
How to Convert Timestamp to Date in Bash
