date(1)                     General Commands Manual                    date(1)

NAME
       date - show and set date and time

SYNOPSIS
       date [ -u ] [ -c ] [ -r seconds ] [ +format ] [ [yyyy]mmddhhmm[yy][.ss]
       ]

DESCRIPTION
       The date command without arguments writes the date and time to the
       standard output in the form
                            Sat Mar  8 14:54:40 EST 2025
       with EST replaced by the local time zone's abbreviation (or by the
       abbreviation for the time zone specified in the TZ environment variable
       if set).  The exact output format depends on the locale.

       If a command-line argument starts with a plus sign ("+"), the rest of
       the argument is used as a format that is processed by strftime(3) to
       determine what to output; a newline character is appended.  For
       example, the shell command:
                            date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z"
       outputs a line like "2025-03-08 14:54:40 -0500" instead.

       These options are available:

       -u or -c
              Use Universal Time when setting and showing the date and time.

       -r seconds
              Output  the  date  that corresponds to seconds past the epoch of
              1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC, where seconds  should  be  an  integer,
              either  decimal, octal (leading 0), or hexadecimal (leading 0x),
              preceded by an optional sign.

FILES
       /etc/localtime               local timezone file
       /usr/lib/locale/L/LC_TIME    description of time locale L
       /usr/share/zoneinfo          timezone directory
       /usr/share/zoneinfo/Etc/UTC  for UTC leap seconds

SEE ALSO
       strftime(3).

Time Zone Database                                                     date(1)