You can use the following syntax to get the last day of the current month in Bash:
date -d "-$(date +%d) days month" +%Y-%m-%d
Here is how this syntax works:
- The inner date +%d returns the current day of the month.
- By using a negative sign ( – ) in front of date +%d, we subtract this number of days from the current date, which is equal to the last day of the previous month.
- Then, by using month we are able to add one month to get the last day of the current month.
- Lastly, we use +%Y-%m-%d to format the resulting date in a specific format with the year, month and day concatenated together using dashes.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: Get Last Day of Current Month in Bash
This article is currently being written on 7/22/2024.
We can use the following syntax to get the last day of the current month in Bash:
date -d "-$(date +%d) days month" +%Y-%m-%d
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
This returns 2024-07-31, which is the last day of the current month in a %Y-%m-%d format.
Note that you can specify any date format that you’d like.
For example, you could use the following syntax to instead return the last day of the current month in a %m/%d%Y format instead:
date -d "-$(date +%d) days month" +%m/%d/%Y
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
This returns 07/31/2024, which represents the last day of the current month in a %m/%d%Y format.
Feel free to specify any date format that you would like.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Bash:
Bash: How to Get Month Name
Bash: How to Get Day of Week
Bash: How to Compare Dates
Bash: How to Extract Date from String
