Bash:
Getting the current date

How to:

In Bash, the date command is your primary tool for getting the current date and time. Here are a few examples of how to use it:

1. Get the current date and time in the default format:

date

Sample output:

Wed Apr 5 14:22:04 PDT 2023

2. Customize the output format: You can specify the output format using +% format specifiers. For example, to display the date in YYYY-MM-DD format:

date "+%Y-%m-%d"

Sample output:

2023-04-05

3. Get the current UNIX timestamp: The UNIX timestamp is the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1, 1970). This is useful for scripts that perform calculations based on time differences.

date "+%s"

Sample output:

1672877344

No popular third-party libraries are typically used for this basic operation in Bash as the built-in date command provides comprehensive functionality. However, for more advanced date and time manipulations, programmers might use other programming languages or tools that offer libraries for date arithmetic and parsing, such as Python’s datetime module.