How to Get Timestamp in Bash

1. Get Timestamp Using the date Command in Bash
2. Store UNIX Timestamp in a Variable

This article discusses the date Bash command to get system date/time and UNIX timestamp.

Get Timestamp Using the date Command in Bash

The Linux terminal uses the date command to print the current date and time. The date command’s simplest version can be executed without any argument.

Following is a sample output for the date command showing the current date and time of the system:

Thu Aug 25 08:43:54 UTC 2022

We can use a different argument with the date command to set the specific format for printing. For example, the command date +"%m-%d-%y" outputs the date in the following format:

08-25-22

In the above command, %m is used to show the month, %d is used to indicate the day, and %y is used to show the year. Similarly, we can use the date command in many different formats.

We can print the current time only using the date +"%T" command. %T is used to print time only.

The output of date +"%T" is as follows:

09:01:00

Get UNIX Timestamp

We can use the date command to show the UNIX timestamp using the date +%s command. The output of date +%s is as follows:

1661417510

The above output is a UNIX timestamp.

Get Date/Time in a Bash Script

We can also use the date command in the Bash script. Consider the following Bash script myscript.sh to display the current date on the terminal:

#!/bin/bash
echo $(date)

When we execute the above script using ./myscript.sh, this will print the current date on the terminal.

Store UNIX Timestamp in a Variable

We can also store the current date in any format using the date command in a variable.

Consider the following script:

#!/bin/bash
timestamp=$(date)
echo $(timestamp)

In the following script, the timestamp is a variable in which we are storing the current date. When we execute the above script, it will display the value of the timestamp variable on the terminal console due to the echo command.

Note: We can store any date and time format in a variable in the Bash script.

For example, we can use:

1. timestamp=$(date +%s) to store the UNIX timestamp in the variable timestamp.
2. timestamp=$(date +%T) to store the current time in the variable timestamp.
3. timestamp=$(date +"%m-%d-%y") to store the current date in the variable timestamp.