21.1 date: Print or set system date and time

Synopses:

date [option]… [+format]
date [-u|--utc|--universal] [ MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss] ]

The date command displays the date and time. With the --set (-s) option, or with ‘MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]’, it sets the date and time.

Invoking date with no format argument is equivalent to invoking it with a default format that depends on the LC_TIME locale category. In the default C locale, this format is ‘'+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y'’, so the output looks like ‘Thu Jul  9 17:00:00 EDT 2020’.

Normally, date uses the time zone rules indicated by the TZ environment variable, or the system default rules if TZ is not set. See Specifying the Time Zone with TZ in The GNU C Library Reference Manual.

An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.