Sometimes it’s useful to print the current time and date in a BASH script. We can make use of the date command for that. By default, and if called without any parameters, it’ll print something like this:
echo $(date) Tue 29 Nov 2016 23:08:10 EST
We can shorten this to just the date by using a formatting shortcut like this:
echo $(date +"%x") 29/11/2016
or just the time using this format:
echo $(date +"%r") 11:09:26 pm
Formatting shortcuts can also be used together, like so:
$(date +"%x %r") 29/11/2016 11:03:44 pm
For a complete list of shortcuts, try “man date” from the command line.