bsd man page for date

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)