Linux date

Linux date 2004-06-01 12:46pm

The linux date command is unixtime aware. You can have it output the seconds since the epoch with a simple command. Date followed by a plus to show it's a format, and the %s to show the seconds.

date +%s

However if you want to go the OTHER way it's really freaking ugly. I can't believe there isn't an easier way to do that!

date -d @371407800

date -d '1970-01-01 UTC +1097575205 seconds'

Easy.

Leave A Reply - 3 Replies

Replies

bob 2005-02-10 11:23am - No Email - Logged IP: 140.90.193.220

The command for the second example could be simplified to:

date -d "1970-01-01 +`date +%s` seconds"

jason 2006-02-18 04:45am - jason@jasonholm.com - Logged IP: 131.151.152.36

Thank you for a super simple example on how to get the seconds since 1970!

Peter 2011-07-26 11:59pm - No Email - Logged IP: 194.88.178.76

If you leave out the UTC you get the wrong time if you are in a different time zone.
So
date -d "1970-01-01 UTC + $(date +%s) seconds"
is correct as it will give you
Wed Jul 27 08:57:13 CEST 2011
if your time zone is CEST
whereas leaving out the UTC will give you
Wed Jul 27 07:57:13 CEST 2011
which is wrong!

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