| DATE(1) | General Commands Manual | DATE(1) | 
date —
| date | [ -ajnRu] [-ddate] [-rseconds]
      [+format]
      [[[[[[CC]yy]mm]dd]HH]MM[.SS]] | 
| date | [ -ajnRu]-finput_format new_date
      [+format] | 
date displays the current date and time when invoked
  without arguments. Providing arguments will format the date and time in a
  user-defined way or set the date. Only the superuser may set the date.
The options are as follows:
-a-a implies
    -n.-d
    date-f
    input_fmt.SS]
      format. Parsing is done using
      strptime(3).-j-ndate will set the time on all of the machines in
      the local group. The -n option stops
      date from setting the time for other than the
      current machine.-R-r
    seconds-uAn operand with a leading plus (+) sign
    signals a user-defined format string which specifies the format in which to
    display the date and time. The format string may contain any of the
    conversion specifications described in the
    strftime(3) manual page, as
    well as any arbitrary text. A ⟨newline⟩ character is always
    output after the characters specified by the format string. The format
    string for the default display is:
%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %YIf an operand does not have a leading plus sign, it is interpreted as a value for setting the system's notion of the current date and time. The canonical representation for setting the date and time is:
Everything but the minutes is optional.
Time changes for Daylight Saving and Standard Time and leap seconds and years are handled automatically.
date:
TZIf /usr/share/zoneinfo/GMT is absent, UTC leap seconds are loaded from /usr/share/zoneinfo/posixrules.
date '+DATE: %m/%d/%y%nTIME:
  %H:%M:%S'will display:
DATE: 11/21/87 TIME: 13:36:16
The command:
date 8506131627sets the date to “June 13, 1985, 4:27
    PM”.
The command:
date 1432sets the time to 2:32 PM, without
    modifying the date.
The command:
date +%sprints the current time as seconds since the Epoch.
Occasionally, when
    timed(8) synchronizes the time
    on many hosts, the setting of a new time value may require more than a few
    seconds. On these occasions, date prints:
    ‘Network time being set’. The message
    ‘Communication error with’
    timed(8) occurs when the
    communication between date and
    timed(8) fails.
R. Gusella and S. Zatti, TSP: The Time Synchronization Protocol for UNIX 4.3BSD.
date utility is expected to be compatible with
  IEEE Std 1003.2 (“POSIX.2”).
date utility appeared in
  Version 1 AT&T UNIX.
| May 31, 2023 | NetBSD 9.4 |