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DATE(1) OpenBSD Reference Manual DATE(1) NAME date - display or set date and time SYNOPSIS date [-ajnu] [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t minutes_west] [+format] [[[[[[cc]yy]mm]dd]HH]MM[.SS]] DESCRIPTION When invoked without arguments, the date utility displays the current date and time. Otherwise, depending on the options specified, date will set the date and time or print it in a user-defined way. Only the superuser may set the date. The options are as follows: -a Use the adjtime(2) call to gradually skew the local time to the remote time rather than just hopping. -d dst Set the system's value for Daylight Saving Time. If dst is non- zero, future calls to gettimeofday(2) will return a non-zero val- ue for tz_dsttime. -j Parse the provided date and time and display the result without changing the clock. -n By default, if the timed(8) daemon is running, date sets the time on all of the machines in the local group. The -n option sup- presses this behavior and causes the time to be set only on the current machine. -r seconds Print out (in specified format) the date and time represented by seconds from the Epoch. -t minutes_west Set the system's value for minutes west of GMT. minutes_west specifies the number of minutes returned in tz_minuteswest by fu- ture calls to gettimeofday(2). -u Display or set the date in UTC (Coordinated Universal) time. An operand with a leading plus sign (`+') signals a user-defined format string which specifies the format in which to display the date and time. The format string may contain any of the conversion specifications de- scribed in the strftime(3) manual page, as well as any arbitrary text. A newline (`\n') character is always output after the characters specified by the format string. The format string for the default display is: %a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y 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 is: ccyy Year: the first two digits (representing the century) may be omitted for non-ambiguous years (1969-2068). 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 Minute: a number from 0 to 59. SS Second: a number from 0 to 61 (59 plus a maximum of two leap seconds). Everything but the minute is optional. Time changes for Daylight Saving Time, standard time, leap seconds, and leap years are handled automatically. ENVIRONMENT TZ The time zone to use when displaying dates. See environ(7) for more information. If this variable is not set, the time zone is determined based on /etc/localtime, which the administrator ad- justs using the -l option of zic(8). FILES /var/log/wtmp record of date resets and time changes /var/log/messages record of the user setting the time EXAMPLES Display the date using the specified format string: $ date "+DATE: %Y-%m-%d%nTIME: %H:%M:%S" DATE: 1987-11-21 TIME: 13:36:16 Set the date to June 13, 1985, 4:27 PM: # date 8506131627 Set the time to 2:32 PM, without modifying the date: # date 1432 DIAGNOSTICS Exit status is 0 on success, 1 if unable to set the date, and 2 if able to set the local date, but unable to set it globally. Occasionally, when timed(8) 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(8) fails. SEE ALSO adjtime(2), gettimeofday(2), strftime(3), utmp(5), ntpd(8), rdate(8), timed(8) R. Gusella and S. Zatti, TSP: The Time Synchronization Protocol for UNIX 4.3BSD. STANDARDS The date utility is expected to be compatible with IEEE Std 1003.2 (``POSIX.2''). HISTORY A date command appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX. OpenBSD 3.9 April 28, 1995 2
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | EXAMPLES | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | STANDARDS | HISTORY
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