Bash Date

To format Bash Date to a required one, bash shell provides date command along with many format options.

Bash Date Command

Following is the syntax of date command

Format Bash Date with Options

As already said, you can format the Bash Date. And the format you wish may contain spaces as well.

Date command accepts options if provided any

To format date with spaces, use the syntax

List of Bash Date Formatting Options

Following are the list of available options for date command :

Format optionPart of DateDesciptionExample Output
date +%a Weekday Name of weekday in short (like Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat) Mon
date +%A Weekday Name of weekday in full (like Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) Monday
date +%b Month Name of Month in short (like Jan, Feb, Mar ) Jan
date +%B Month Month name in full short (like January, February) January
date +%d Day Day of month (e.g., 01) 04
date +%D MM/DD/YY Current Date; shown in MM/DD/YY 02/18/18
date +%F YYYY-MM-DD Date; shown in YYYY-MM-DD 2018-01-19
date +%H Hour Hour in 24-hour clock format 18
date +%I Hour Hour in 12-hour clock format 10
date +%j Day Day of year (001..366) 152
date +%m Month Number of month (01..12) (01 is January) 05
date +%M Minutes Minutes (00..59) 52
date +%S Seconds Seconds (00..59) 18
date +%N Nanoseconds Nanoseconds (000000000..999999999) 300231695
date +%T HH:MM:SS Time as HH:MM:SS (Hours in 24 Format) 18:55:42
date +%u Day of Week Day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday 7
date +%U Week Displays week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53) 23
date +%Y Year Displays full year i.e. YYYY 2018
date +%Z  Timezone Time zone abbreviation (Ex: IST, GMT) IST

You may use any of the above-mentioned format options (first column) for the date command in the aforementioned syntax.

Examples

Bash Date Format MM-DD-YYYY

To format date in MM-DD-YYYY format, use the command  date +%m-%d-%Y .

Please observe the upper and lower case letters : %m for month, %d for day and %Y for year. %M would mean minutes.

Bash Date Format MM-YYYY

To format date in MM-YYYY format, use the command  date +%m-%Y .

Bash Date Format: Weekday DD-Month, YYYY

To format date in MM-DD-YYYY format, use the command  date +%m-%d-%Y .