How To Get / Print Current Date in Unix / Linux Shell Script

To get the current date in a Unix or Linux shell script, you can use the date command.

Here is the basic syntax for using the date command to get the current date:

date

This will display the current date and time in the default format.

You can use the + option to specify a custom format for the date and time.

For example, to get the current date in the format YYYY-MM-DD, you can use the following command:

date +%Y-%m-%d

This will display the current date in the format YYYY-MM-DD, where %Y represents the year, %m represents the month, and %d represents the day.

You can use other format specifiers to customize the output of the date command.

For example, to get the current date and time in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, you can use the following command:

date +%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S

This will display the current date and time in the format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, where %Y represents the year, %m represents the month, %d represents the day, %H represents the hour, %M represents the minute, and %S represents the second.

You can use the date command in a shell script by enclosing it in backticks (```).

For example:

#!/bin/bash

current_date=`date +%Y-%m-%d`
echo "The current date is: $current_date"

This script will get the current date in the format YYYY-MM-DD and store it in the current_date variable, and then print the value of the current_date variable to the terminal.