DATE(1)				 User Commands			       DATE(1)



NAME
       date - print or set the system date and time

SYNOPSIS
       date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
       date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

DESCRIPTION
       Display the current time in the given FORMAT, or set the system date.

       -d, --date=STRING
	      display time described by STRING, not `now'

       -f, --file=DATEFILE
	      like --date once for each line of DATEFILE

       -ITIMESPEC, --iso-8601[=TIMESPEC]
	      output  date/time	 in ISO 8601 format.  TIMESPEC=`date' for date
	      only, `hours', `minutes', or `seconds' for date and time to  the
	      indicated	 precision.   --iso-8601  without TIMESPEC defaults to
	      `date'.

       -r, --reference=FILE
	      display the last modification time of FILE

       -R, --rfc-822
	      output RFC-822 compliant date string

       -s, --set=STRING
	      set time described by STRING

       -u, --utc, --universal
	      print or set Coordinated Universal Time

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
	      output version information and exit

       FORMAT controls the output.  The only valid option for the second  form
       specifies Coordinated Universal Time.  Interpreted sequences are:

       %%     a literal %

       %a     locale's abbreviated weekday name (Sun..Sat)

       %A     locale's full weekday name, variable length (Sunday..Saturday)

       %b     locale's abbreviated month name (Jan..Dec)

       %B     locale's full month name, variable length (January..December)

       %c     locale's date and time (Sat Nov 04 12:02:33 EST 1989)

       %C     century  (year  divided  by  100	and  truncated	to an integer)
	      [00-99]

       %d     day of month (01..31)

       %D     date (mm/dd/yy)

       %e     day of month, blank padded ( 1..31)

       %F     same as %Y-%m-%d

       %g     the 2-digit year corresponding to the %V week number

       %G     the 4-digit year corresponding to the %V week number

       %h     same as %b

       %H     hour (00..23)

       %I     hour (01..12)

       %j     day of year (001..366)

       %k     hour ( 0..23)

       %l     hour ( 1..12)

       %m     month (01..12)

       %M     minute (00..59)

       %n     a newline

       %N     nanoseconds (000000000..999999999)

       %p     locale's upper case AM or PM indicator (blank in many locales)

       %P     locale's lower case am or pm indicator (blank in many locales)

       %r     time, 12-hour (hh:mm:ss [AP]M)

       %R     time, 24-hour (hh:mm)

       %s     seconds since `00:00:00 1970-01-01 UTC' (a GNU extension)

       %S     second (00..60); the 60 is necessary to accommodate a leap  sec-
	      ond

       %t     a horizontal tab

       %T     time, 24-hour (hh:mm:ss)

       %u     day of week (1..7);  1 represents Monday

       %U     week number of year with Sunday as first day of week (00..53)

       %V     week number of year with Monday as first day of week (01..53)

       %w     day of week (0..6);  0 represents Sunday

       %W     week number of year with Monday as first day of week (00..53)

       %x     locale's date representation (mm/dd/yy)

       %X     locale's time representation (%H:%M:%S)

       %y     last two digits of year (00..99)

       %Y     year (1970...)

       %z     RFC-822 style numeric timezone (-0500) (a nonstandard extension)

       %Z     time zone (e.g., EDT), or nothing if  no	time  zone  is	deter-
	      minable

       By  default, date pads numeric fields with zeroes.  GNU date recognizes
       the following modifiers between `%' and a numeric directive.

	      `-' (hyphen) do not pad the field `_' (underscore) pad the field
	      with spaces

ENVIRONMENT
       TZ     Specifies the timezone, unless overridden by command line param-
	      eters.  If neither is specified, the setting from /etc/localtime
	      is used.

AUTHOR
       Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS
       Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright