date

Purpose

Display the current date and time or set a new date and time.

Syntax

date [options] [+format]

date [-su] [MMDDHHMM[[CC]YY][.SS]]

Options

-u displays or sets the time using Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Description

The date command alone displays the current date and time. Using the +format argument, you can specify a display format for the date and time. For a complete listing of the format specification, type man date.

To set the date, use date followed by the date and time in the MMDDHHMM format, where each character is a digit (MM is the month, DD is the day, HH the hour, and MM the minutes). You can optionally specify the year (YY) and century (CC) as well.