Bash Date Format Options

In this tutorial, we will learn the available format options for date command and how to format a date in Bash Scripting, with examples.

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

$ date

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

$ date +<format-option><format-option>

To format date with spaces, use the syntax

$ date '+<format-option><format-option> <format-option>'

List of Bash Date Formatting Options

Following are the list of available options for date command :

Format option	Part of Date	Description	Example 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 (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.

Bash Script

#!/bin/bash

d=`date +%m-%d-%Y`
echo $d    # 12-30-2017

Output

11-20-2020

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 Script

#!/bin/bash

d=`date +%m-%Y`

echo $d    # 12-2017

Output

11-20-2020

Bash Date Format: Weekday DD-Month, YYYY

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

Bash Script

#!/bin/bash

d=`date '+%A %d-%B, %Y'`

echo $d   #  Saturday 30-December, 2017

Output

11-20-2020

Conclusion

Concluding this Bash Tutorial – Bash Date, we have learned to use date command, the list of Bash Date Format options available with the date command and some of the examples demonstrating the usage of the format options.