creates a tar.gz with a name like: backup20090410_173053.tar.gz of a given directory. this file was made 10 April 2009 at 5:30:53pm see date's man page to customize the timestamp format

Use date to find the date at other days and times.

With this command you can get a previous or future date or time. Where can you use this? How about finding all files modified or created in the last 5 mins? touch -t `echo $(date -d "5 minute ago" "+%G%m%d%H%M.%S")` me && find . -type f -newer me List all directories created since last week? touch -t `echo $(date -d "1 week ago" "+%G%m%d%H%M.%S")` me && find . -type d -cnewer me I'm sure you can think of more ways to use it. Requires coreutils package. Show Sample Output

(Useful when firewalls prevent you from using NTP.)

Not as cool as the python example, but it still works. Show Sample Output

Set Remote Server Date using Local Server Time (push) Show Sample Output

Shorter and faster... Show Sample Output

I removed the dependency of the English language Show Sample Output

Apart from an exact copy of your recent contents, also keep all earlier versions of files and folders that were modified or deleted. Inspired by EVACopy http://evacopy.sourceforge.net Show Sample Output

displays time in seconds since January 1, 1970 UTC Show Sample Output

More recent versions of the date command finally have the ability to decode the unix epoch time into a human readable date. This function makes it simple to utilize this feature quickly. Show Sample Output

This command prints the Date (Not time) from 3 days ago (72 hours ago). This works on systems without GNU date (MacOSX , Solaris, FreeBSD). Show Sample Output

It's quite easy to capture the output of a command and assign it in a shell's variable: day=$(date +%d) month=$(date +%m) But, what if we want to perform the same task with just one program invocation? Here comes the power of eval! date(1) outputs a string like "day=29; month=07; year=11" (notice the semicolons I added on purpose at date's custom output) which is a legal shell line. This like is then parsed and executed by the shell once again with the help of eval. Just setting 3 variables! Inspired by LinuxJournal's column "Dave Taylor's Work the Shell". Show Sample Output

Requires you to have password free login to remote host ;) Requires xclip and notify-send (If you want to put into clipboard and be notified when action is completed). DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S)-$(($(date +%N)/10000000)); HOST="ssh host of your choice"; DEST="destination folder without trailing slash"; URL="URL for file if uploaded to web enabled dir ie. import -window root png:- | ssh $HOST "cat > $DEST/screenshot_$DATE.png"; echo $URL | xclip; notify-send -u low "Screenshot Taken" "Entire screen.\nCopied to clipboard" Show Sample Output

Source: http://www.my-guides.net/en/guides/linux/364-how-to-create-a-continuous-digital-clock-in-linux-terminal Show Sample Output

The date command does offset calculations nicely, handles concepts like "a month" as you'd expect, and is good for offsets of at least 100M years in either direction. Show Sample Output

A useful bash function: gztardir() { if [ $# -ne 1 ] ; then echo "incorrect arguments: should be gztardir " else tar zcvf "${1%/}-$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M).tar.gz" "$1" fi }

See: http://imgur.com/JgjK2.png for example. Do some serious benchmarking from the commandline. This will write to a file with the time it took to compress n bytes to the file (increasing by 1). Run: gnuplot -persist <(echo "plot 'lzma' with lines, 'gzip' with lines, 'bzip2' with lines") To see it in graph form.

Works on real time clock, unix time based, decrementing the actual time from initial time saved in an environment variable exported to child process inside watch Shows elapsed time from start of script in hh:mm:ss format Non afected by system slow down due to the use of date.

Several people have submitted commands to do this, but I think this is the simplest solution. It also happens to be the most portable one: It should work with any sh or csh derived shell under any UNIX-like OS. Oh by the way, with my German locale ($LC_TIME set appropriately) it prints "g" most of the time, and sometimes (on Wednesdays) it prints "h". It never prints "y". Show Sample Output

Create a file with actual date as filename Show Sample Output