date(1) [bsd man page]
DATE(1) General Commands Manual DATE(1) NAME
date - print and set the date SYNOPSIS
date [-nu] [-d dst] [-t timezone] [yymmddhhmm [.ss] ] DESCRIPTION
If no arguments are given, the current date and time are printed. Providing an argument will set the desired date; only the superuser can set the date. The -d and -t flags set the kernel's values for daylight savings time and minutes west of GMT. If dst is non-zero, future calls to gettimeofday(2) will return a non-zero tz_dsttime. Timezone provides the number of minutes returned by future calls to gettimeof- day(2) in tz_minuteswest. The -u flag is used to display or set the date in GMT (universal) time. yy represents the last two digits of the year; the first mm is the month number; dd is the day number; hh is the hour number (24 hour system); the second mm is the minute num- ber; .ss is optional and represents the seconds. For example: date 8506131627 sets the date to June 13 1985, 4:27 PM. The year, month and day may be omitted; the default values will be the current ones. The system operates in GMT. Date takes care of the conversion to and from local standard and daylight-saving time. If timed(8) is running to synchronize the clocks of machines in a local area network, date sets the time globally on all those machines unless the -n option is given. FILES
/usr/adm/wtmp to record time-setting. In /usr/adm/messages, date records the name of the user setting the time. SEE ALSO
gettimeofday(2), utmp(5), timed(8), TSP: The Time Synchronization Protocol for UNIX 4.3BSD, R. Gusella and S. Zatti DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is 0 on success, 1 on complete failure to set the date, and 2 on successfully setting the local date but failing globally. Occasionally, when timed synchronizes the time on many hosts, the setting of a new time value may require more than a few seconds. On these occasions, date prints: `Network time being set'. The message `Communication error with timed' occurs when the communication between date and timed fails. BUGS
The system attempts to keep the date in a format closely compatible with VMS. VMS, however, uses local time (rather than GMT) and does not understand daylight-saving time. Thus, if you use both UNIX and VMS, VMS will be running on GMT. 4th Berkeley Distribution March 24, 1987 DATE(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
date(1) General Commands Manual date(1) Name date - print date and time Syntax date [-c | -u] [ +format ] [[yy[mm[dd]]]hhmm[.ss][-[-]tttt][z]] Description If no argument is given, or if the argument begins with +, the current date and time are printed. Otherwise, the current date is set. The first mm is the month number; dd is the day number in the month; hh is the hour number (24 hour clock); the second mm is the minute number; .ss the second; -[-]tttt is the minutes west of Greenwich; a positive number means your time zone is west of Greenwich (for example, North and South America) and a negative number means it is east of Greenwich (for example Europe); z is a one letter code indicating the dst cor- rection mode (n=none, u=usa, a=australian, w=western europe, m=middle europe, e=eastern europe); yy is the last 2 digits of the year number and is optional. The following example sets the date to Oct 8, 12:45 AM: date 10080045 The current year is the default if no year is mentioned. The system operates in GMT. The takes care of the conversion to and from local standard and daylight time. If the argument begins with +, the output of is under the control of the user. The format for the output is similar to that of the first argument to All output fields are of fixed size (zero padded if necessary). Each field descriptor is preceded by % and is replaced in the output by its corresponding value. A single % is encoded by %%. All other characters are copied to the output without change. The string is always terminated with a new-line character. Options -c Perform operations using Coordinated Universal Time (UCT) instead of the default local time. The UCT does not use leap seconds so UCT is the same as GMT. -u Perform operations using Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) instead of the default local time. + format The following is a list of field Descriptors that can be used in the format (Note: date exits after processing format information) : %a Locale's abbreviated weekday name %A Locale's full weekday name %b Locale's abbreviated month name %B Locale's full month name %c Locale's date and time representation %d Day of month as a decimal number (01-31) %D Date (%m/%d/%y) %h Locale's abbreviated month name %H Hour as a decimal number (00-23) %I Hour as a decimal number (01-12) %j Day of year (001-366) %m Number of month (01-12) %M Minute number (00-59) %n Newline character %p Locale's equivalent to AM or PM %r Time in AM/PM notation %S Second number (00-59) %t Tab character %T Time (%H/%M/%S) %U Week number (00-53), Sunday as first day of week %w Weekday number (0[Sunday]-6) %W Week number (00-53), Monday as first day of week %x Locale's date representation %X Locale's time representation %y Year without century (00-99) %Y Year with century %Z Timezone name, no characters if no timezone %% % Examples The following command line date +%m/%d/%y generates the following output 04/02/89 The following command line date +"DATE: %m/%d/%y%nTIME: %H:%M:%S" generates the following output DATE: 04/02/89 TIME: 14:45:05 The quotes (") are necessary because the format contains blank characters. Use single quotes (') to prevent interpretation by the shell. Diagnostics Failed to set date: Not owner You are not the super-user and you tryed to change the date. Do not change the date while the system is running in multiuser mode. Restrictions An attempt to set a date to before 1/1/1970 will result in the date being set to 1/1/1970. Files /dev/kmem date(1)