UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I am trying to show today's date and time in a better format than ‘date' (Using positional parameters). I found a command mktime and am wondering if this is the best command to use or will this also show me the time elapse since 1/30/70? Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks citizencro....

---------- Post updated at 08:22 PM ---------- Previous update was at 08:16 PM ----------

nevermind, I can't even get mktime to work.... soI am back to lost....

Do you mean like this?

Code:

 > date
Mon Apr 11 20:36:30 EDT 2011
> date +'%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S'
04/11/2011 20:36:31

it's asking me to use a different command or "better" command than date???

---------- Post updated at 08:40 PM ---------- Previous update was at 08:39 PM ----------

by creating a shell script....

It really depends on your own personal preferences for the 'date' format.
From a terminal, you need to look at man date.
My personal favorite full datecode is:

Code:

date +"%A, %B %d, %Y %I:%M %p %Z"

Which currently gives:

Code:

Monday, April 11, 2011 08:05 PM CDT