Hide

What's this?

commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again.

Delete that bloated snippets file you've been using and share your personal repository with the world. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.

If you have a new feature suggestion or find a bug, please get in touch via http://commandlinefu.uservoice.com/

Get involved!

You can sign-in using OpenID credentials, or register a traditional username and password.

OpenID

First-time OpenID users will be automatically assigned a username which can be changed after signing in.

Hide

Stay in the loop…

Follow the Tweets.

Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.

» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10

Subscribe to the feeds.

Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):

Subscribe to the feed for:

» all commands
» commands with 3 up-votes (commandlinefu3)
» commands with 10 up-votes (commandlinefu10)
» commands tagged date

Hide

News

2011-03-12 - Confoo 2011 presentation: Slides are available from the commandlinefu presentation at Confoo 2011: http://presentations.codeinthehole.com/confoo2011/
2011-01-04 - Moderation now required for new commands: To try and put and end to the spamming, new commands require moderation before they will appear on the site.
2010-12-27 - Apologies for not banning the trolls sooner: Have been away from the interwebs over Christmas. Will be more vigilant henceforth.
2010-09-24 - OAuth and pagination problems fixed: Apologies for the delay in getting Twitter's OAuth supported. Annoying pagination gremlin also fixed.

Hide

Functions

Hide

Credits

Site by David Winterbottom (user root).

Commands tagged date

Terminal - Commands tagged date - 84 results

touch file-$(date +%Y%m%d)

2010-05-24 07:43:45

User: foolano

Functions: date touch

Tags: file date

Up
Down

creeate file named after actual date

Create a file with actual date as filename

grep -i "$(date +%b\ %d\ %H)" syslog

2010-05-23 16:18:15

User: foolano

Functions: grep

Tags: log date

Up
Down

Grep syslog today last hour

Uses date to grep de logfile for today and uses it to get the last hour logs. Can be used to get last minute logs or today's logs.

utime(){ python -c "import time; print(time.strftime('%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y', time.localtime($1)))"; }

2010-05-14 08:00:44

User: 4Aiur

Functions: python

Tags: Date manipulation Linux solaris unix date function time zsh convert

Up
Down

Easily decode unix-time (funtion)

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

utime(){ awk -v d=$1 'BEGIN{print strftime("%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y", d)}'; }

2010-05-14 08:00:04

User: 4Aiur

Functions: awk

Tags: Date manipulation Linux solaris unix date function time zsh convert

Up
Down

Easily decode unix-time (funtion)

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

utime(){ date -d "1970-01-01 GMT $1 seconds"; }

2010-05-14 07:49:49

User: 4Aiur

Functions: date

Tags: Date manipulation Linux solaris unix date function time zsh convert

Up
Down

Easily decode unix-time (funtion)

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

utime { date -d @$1; }

2010-05-12 12:21:15

User: deltaray

Functions: date

Tags: Date manipulation Linux solaris unix date function time zsh convert

Up
Down

Easily decode unix-time (funtion)

More recent versions of the date command finally have the ability to decode the unix epoch time into a human readable date. This function makes it simple to utilize this feature quickly.

alias dateh='date --help|sed -n "/^ *%%/,/^ *%Z/p"|while read l;do F=${l/% */}; date +%$F:"|'"'"'${F//%n/ }'"'"'|${l#* }";done|sed "s/\ *|\ */|/g" |column -s "|" -t'

This is sample output - yours may be different.

%%:     '%'                         a literal %
%a:     'Wed'                       locale's abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Sun)
%A:     'Wednesday'                 locale's full weekday name (e.g., Sunday)
%b:     'Mar'                       locale's abbreviated month name (e.g., Jan)
%B:     'March'                     locale's full month name (e.g., January)
%c:     'Wed Mar 27 23:50:06 2013'  locale's date and time (e.g., Thu Mar  3 23:05:25 2005)
%C:     '20'                        century; like 2013, except omit last two digits (e.g., 20)
%d:     '27'                        day of month (e.g., 01)
%D:     '03/27/13'                  date; same as 03/27/13
%e:     '27'                        day of month, space padded; same as 27
%F:     '2013-03-27'                full date; same as 2013-03-27
%g:     '13'                        last two digits of year of ISO week number (see 2013)
%G:     '2013'                      year of ISO week number (see 13); normally useful only with 13
%h:     'Mar'                       same as Mar
%H:     '23'                        hour (00..23)
%I:     '11'                        hour (01..12)
%j:     '086'                       day of year (001..366)
%k:     '23'                        hour, space padded ( 0..23); same as 23
%l:     '11'                        hour, space padded ( 1..12); same as 11
%m:     '03'                        month (01..12)
%M:     '50'                        minute (00..59)
%n:     ' '                         a newline
%N:     '853525313'                 nanoseconds (000000000..999999999)
%p:     'PM'                        locale's equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known
%P:     'pm'                        like PM, but lower case
%r:     '11:50:06 PM'               locale's 12-hour clock time (e.g., 11:11:04 PM)
%R:     '23:50'                     24-hour hour and minute; same as 23:50
%s:     '1364442606'                seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
%S:     '06'                        second (00..60)
%t:     '       '                             a tab
%T:     '23:50:06'                  time; same as 23:50:06
%u:     '3'                         day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday
%U:     '12'                        week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)
%V:     '13'                        ISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53)
%w:     '3'                         day of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday
%W:     '12'                        week number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53)
%x:     '03/27/13'                  locale's date representation (e.g., 12/31/99)
%X:     '23:50:06'                  locale's time representation (e.g., 23:13:48)
%y:     '13'                        last two digits of year (00..99)
%Y:     '2013'                      year
%z:     '-0400'                     +hhmm numeric time zone (e.g., -0400)
%:z:    '-04:00'                    +hh:mm numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00)
%::z:   '-04:00:00'                 +hh:mm:ss numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00:00)
%:::z:  '-04'                       numeric time zone with : to necessary precision (e.g., -04, +05:30)
%Z:     'EDT'                       alphabetic time zone abbreviation (e.g., EDT)

2010-04-21 01:22:18

User: AskApache

Functions: alias column date read sed

Tags: bash sed alias column read while date loop for substitution askapache sh POSIX locale parameter

Up
Down

View all date formats, Quick Reference Help Alias

If you have used bash for any scripting, you've used the date command alot. It's perfect for using as a way to create filename's dynamically within aliases,functions, and commands like below.. This is actually an update to my first alias, since a few commenters (below) had good observations on what was wrong with my first command.

# creating a date-based ssh-key for askapache.github.com

ssh-keygen -f ~/.ssh/`date +git-$USER@$HOSTNAME-%m-%d-%g` -C 'webmaster@askapache.com' # /home/gpl/.ssh/git-gplnet@askapache.github.com-04-22-10

# create a tar+gzip backup of the current directory

tar -czf $(date +$HOME/.backups/%m-%d-%g-%R-`sed -u 's/\//#/g' <<< $PWD`.tgz) . # tar -czf /home/gpl/.backups/04-22-10-01:13-#home#gpl#.rr#src.tgz .

I personally find myself having to reference

date --help

quite a bit as a result. So this nice alias saves me a lot of time. This is one bdash mofo. Works in sh and bash (posix), but will likely need to be changed for other shells due to the parameter substitution going on.. Just extend the sed command, I prefer sed to pretty much everything anyways.. but it's always preferable to put in the extra effort to go for as much builtin use as you can. Otherwise it's not a top one-liner, it's a lazyboy recliner.

Here's the old version:

alias dateh='date --help|sed "/^ *%%/,/^ *%Z/!d;s/ \+/ /g"|while read l;do date "+ %${l/% */}_${l/% */}_${l#* }";done|column -s_ -t'

This trick from my [ http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html bash_profile ]

date +%A | cut -c $(( $(date +%A | wc -c) - 1 ))

2010-04-07 00:23:15

User: DaveQB

Functions: cut date wc

Tags: bash echo cut date wc

Up
Down

Bash function to see what the day ends in

A command to find out what the day ends in. Can be edited slightly to find out what "any" output ends in.

NB: I haven't tested with weird and wonderful output.

function ends_in_y() { case $(date +%A) in *y ) true ;; * ) false ;; esac } ; ends_in_y && echo ok

2010-04-06 22:18:52

User: unixmonkey9199

Functions: date echo false true

Tags: bash sed echo date function

-1

Up
Down

Bash function to see if the day ends in

The shell has perfectly adequate pattern matching for simple expressions.

function ends_in_y() { if [ `date +%A | sed -e 's/$^.*$$.$$/\2/'` == "y" ]; then echo 1; else echo 0; fi }

2010-04-06 20:14:34

User: allrightname

Functions: echo sed

Tags: bash sed echo date function

-3

Up
Down

Bash function to see if the day ends in "y"

For those days when you need to know if something is happening because the day ends in "y".

sed -i 's/20[0-1][0-9]\{7\}/'`date +%Y%m%d%I`'/g' *.db

2010-03-24 07:28:58

User: alf

Functions: sed

Tags: Linux sed serial date dns cpanel

Up
Down

Update zone file Serial numbers

Will edit *.db files in the same directory with todays date. Useful for doing a mass update to domains on a nameserver, adding spf records, etc.

Looks for a string starting with 200 or 201 followed by 7 numbers, and replaces with todays date. This won't overwrite Ip's but i would still do some double checking after running this.

Make sure your server's date is correct, otherwise insert your own serial number.

rndc reload

should usually follow this command.

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

date -j -v1d -v-0m -v-1d +'%m %d %Y'

2010-03-04 17:47:51

User: drewk

Functions: date

Tags: Date manipulation date POSIX

-4

Up
Down

Calculate the the last day of a month +/- from current month

This produces a parseable output of the last day of the month in future or past. Change the '-v-0m' to be a month plus or minus from the current system time.

date -s "`curl -sI www.example.com | sed -n 's/^Date: //p'`"

2010-01-08 21:05:41

User: putnamhill

Functions: date

Tags: curl date

Up
Down

Poor man's ntpdate

If you don't have netcat, you can use curl.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

date -s "$(echo -e "HEAD / HTTP/1.0\n" | nc www.example.com 80 | sed -ne 's/^Date: $.*$$/\1/p')"

2010-01-08 20:05:00

User: tomhol

Functions: date

Tags: date

Up
Down

Poor man's ntpdate

Good when firewalled and only in need of a reasonable accurate time.

Use a fast responding web server.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

xvkbd -xsendevent -text $(date +%Y%m%d)

2009-12-23 12:01:07

User: sputnick

Functions: date

Tags: X X11 xvkbd date clipboard

Up
Down

Typing the current date ( or any string ) via a shortcut as if the keys had been actually typed with the hardware keyboard in any application.

That works in all softs, CLI or GUI... I don't want to waste time to all the time typing the same stuff . So, I have that command in my window manager shortcuts ( meta+l ). All the window managers have editable shortcuts AFAIK. If not, or you don't want to use it that way, you can easily use the xbindkeys soft.

I you're using kde4, you can run :

systemsettings

then open "inputs actions" and create a new shortcut.

For Gnome take a look there : http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-create-keyboard-shortcuts-in-gnome/

A more advanced one, with strings and newlines :

xvkbd -xsendevent -text "---8<-----\nToday date is: $(date +%Y%m%d)\n---8<-----"

For complicated or long paste, you can feed xvkbd with a file :

xvkbd -xsendevent -file <file>

You can simulate ^C ( control+c ) too or others combinations of keys :

xvkbd -text "\C\Ac"

There's no man page nor help ( On my Archlinux distro ), but you can see online doc there : http://homepage3.nifty.com/tsato/xvkbd/

curl -o id.gif `date +http://d.yimg.com/a/p/uc/%Y%m%d/largeimagecrwiz%y%m%d.gif`

2009-12-04 20:16:32

User: putnamhill

Tags: curl date

Up
Down

get daily wizard of id comic

Requires the date command. This also works with some other comics. Here's a bash script that displays daily Garfield, Id, and Andy Capp:

http://putnamhill.net/cgi-bin/yahoo-comics.sh?ga,crwiz,crcap

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

ruby -rdate -e 'p DateTime.now.cweek'

2009-12-02 02:33:51

User: Tekhne

Tags: date week ruby

Up
Down

ruby one-liner to get the current week number

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

date +%V

2009-12-01 21:40:56

User: putnamhill

Functions: date

Tags: date week

Up
Down

perl one-liner to get the current week number

Not perl but shorter.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

ruby -e 'require "date"; puts DateTime.now.cweek'

2009-12-01 20:59:18

User: imsaar

Tags: date week ruby

Up
Down

ruby one-liner to get the current week number

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

perl -e 'use Date::Calc qw(Today Week_Number); $weekn = Week_Number(Today); print "$weekn\n"'

2009-12-01 20:56:13

User: imsaar

Functions: perl

Tags: perl date week

-3

Up
Down

perl one-liner to get the current week number

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

backup() { for i in "$@"; do cp -va $i $i.$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S); done }

2009-11-10 20:59:45

User: polaco

Functions: cp date

Tags: backup copy date

Up
Down

Create date based backups

This script creates date based backups of the files. It copies the files to the same place the original ones are but with an additional extension that is the timestamp of the copy on the following format: YearMonthDay-HourMinuteSecond

utime(){ perl -e "print localtime($1).\"\n\"";}

2009-11-06 12:58:10

User: MoHaG

Functions: perl

Tags: Date manipulation Linux perl solaris unix date function time zsh convert

Up
Down

Easily decode unix-time (funtion)

A shell function using perl to easily convert Unix-time to text.

Put in in your ~/.bashrc or equivalent.

Tested on Linux / Solaris Bourne, bash and zsh. using perl 5.6 and higher.

(Does not require GNU date like some other commands)

perl -e 'print scalar(gmtime(1234567890)), "\n"'

2009-08-25 15:00:52

User: andrew112358

Functions: perl

Tags: Date manipulation solaris date epoch

Up
Down

convert unixtime to human-readable

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

echo "0t${currentEpoch}=Y" | /usr/bin/adb

2009-08-25 12:17:01

User: verboEse

Functions: echo

Tags: Date manipulation solaris date epoch

Up
Down

convert unixtime to human-readable

this works on Solaris, so not better than the "only-GNU"-tool :-(

I think, there is no one-liner for this, that will work on all *nix-es

git diff --numstat -w --no-abbrev | perl -a -ne '$F[0] != 0 && $F[1] !=0 && print $F[2] . "\n";'

2009-08-19 05:07:58

User: lingo

Functions: diff perl

Tags: git exclude date dates permissions modified files

Up
Down

Show changed files, ignoring permission, date and whitespace changes

Only shows files with actual changes to text (excluding whitespace). Useful if you've messed up permissions or transferred in files from windows or something like that, so that you can get a list of changed files, and clean up the rest.

Comments (2) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious | Submit alternative | Report as a duplicate

< 1 2 3 4 >