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DATE(1) General Commands Manual DATE(1) NAME date -- Display or set date and time SYNOPSIS date [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t minutes_west] [-nu] [+format] [[yy[mm[dd[hh]]]]mm[.ss]] DESCRIPTION Date displays the current date and time when invoked without arguments. Providing arguments will format the date and time in a user-defined way or set the date. Only the superuser may set the date. The options are as follows: -d Set the kernel's values for daylight savings time. If dst is non-zero, future calls to gettimeofday(2) will return a non- zero `tz_dsttime'. -n The utility timed(8) is used to synchronize the clocks of groups of machines. By default, if timed is running, date will set the time on all of the machines in the local group. The -n option stops date from setting the time for other than the cur- rent machine. -r Print out the date and time for seconds from the Epoch. -t Set the kernel's values for minutes west of GMT. Minutes_west specifies the number of minutes returned in `tz_minuteswest' by future calls to gettimeofday(2). -u Display or set the date in UCT (universal) time. An operand with a leading plus (``+'') sign signals a user-defined for- mat string which specifies the format in which to display the date and time. The format string may contain any of the conversion specifica- tions described in the strftime(3) manual page, as well as any arbi- trary text. The format string for the default display is: ``%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z n''. If an operand does not have a leading plus sign, it is interpreted as a value for setting the system's notion of the current date and time. The canonical representation for setting the date and time: yy Year in abbreviated form (.e.g 89 for 1989). mm Numeric month. A number from 1 to 12. dd Day, a number from 1 to 31. hh Hour, a number from 0 to 23. mm Minutes, a number from 0 to 59. .ss Seconds, a number from 0 to 59. Everything but the minutes are optional. Time changes for Daylight Saving and Standard time and leap seconds and years are handled automatically. EXAMPLES The command: date ``+DATE: %m/%d/%y%nTIME: %H:%M:%n'' will display: DATE: 11/21/87 TIME: 13:36:16 The command: date 8506131627 sets the date to "June 13 1985, 4:27 PM". The command: date 1432 sets the time to 2:32 PM, without modifying the date. FILES /var/log/wtmp A record of date resets and time changes. /var/log/messages A record of the user setting the time. SEE ALSO gettimeofday(2), strftime(3), utmp(5), timed(8) R. Gusella and S. Zatti, TSP: The Time Synchronization Protocol for UNIX 4.3BSD. DIAGNOSTICS Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if unable to set the date, and 2 if able to set the local date but failing to set it globally. Occasionally, when timed synchronizes the time on many hosts, the set- ting 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. HISTORY The date command is expected to be compatible with . net2 July 30, 1991 DATE(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | EXAMPLES | FILES | SEE ALSO | DIAGNOSTICS | BUGS | HISTORY
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