How to change Git log date formats

Question

I am trying to display the last commit within Git  but I need the date in a special format   I know that the log pretty format  ad respects the --date format  but the only --date format I can find is  short   I want to know the others  and whether I can create a custom one such as   git -n 1 --date   YYMMDDHHmm   --pretty format  Last committed item in this release was by   an    aD  message    s   h    d

User · Accepted Answer

The others are  from git help log    --date  relative local default iso rfc short raw    Only takes effect for dates shown in human-readable format    such as when using  --pretty    log date config variable   sets a default value for log command   s --date option   --date relative shows dates relative to the current time  e g   2 hours ago    --date local shows timestamps in user   s local timezone   --date iso  or --date iso8601  shows timestamps in ISO 8601 format   --date rfc  or --date rfc2822  shows timestamps in RFC 2822 format    often found in E-mail messages   --date short shows only date but not time  in YYYY-MM-DD format   --date raw shows the date in the internal raw git format  s  z format   --date default shows timestamps in the original timezone    either committer   s or author   s     There is no built-in way that I know of to create a custom format  but you can do some shell magic   timestamp  git log -n1 --format   at   my date  perl -e  print scalar localtime   timestamp    git log -n1 --pretty format  Blah-blah  my date    The first step here gets you a millisecond timestamp  You can change the second line to format that timestamp however you want  This example gives you something similar to --date local  with a padded day     And if you want permanent effect without typing this every time  try  git config log date iso    Or  for effect on all your git usage with this account   git config --global log date iso

User · Answer

Use Bash and the date command to convert from an ISO-like format to the one you want  I wanted an org-mode date format  and list item   so I did this   echo      date -d    git log --pretty format  ai -1      Y- m- d  a  H  M            git log --pretty format   h  s  --abbrev 12 -1    And the result is for example      2015-09-13 Sun 22 44  2b0ad02e6cec Merge pull request  72 from 3b bug-1474631

User · Answer

git log -n1 --format  Last committed item in this release was by  an   git log -n1 --format  at   awk   print strftime   y m d H M   1      message   s   h    d

User · Answer

The format option  ai was what I wanted       ai  author date  ISO 8601-like format   --format   ai

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Git 2 7  Q4 2015  will introduce -local as an instruction  It means that  in addition to   --date  relative local default iso iso-strict rfc short raw    you will also have   --date  default-local iso-local iso-strict-local rfc-local short-local    The -local suffix cannot be used with raw or relative  Reference   You now can ask for any date format using the local timezone  See    commit 99264e9   commit db7bae2   commit dc6d782  commit f3c1ba5   commit f95cecf   commit 4b1c5e1   commit 8f50d26   commit 78a8441   commit 2df4e29  03 Sep 2015  by John Keeping  johnkeeping       See commit add00ba  commit 547ed71  03 Sep 2015  by Jeff King  peff    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 7b09c45  05 Oct 2015     In particular  the last from above  commit add00ba  mentions      date  make  local  orthogonal to date format       Most of our  --date  modes are about the format of the date  which items we show and in what order    But  --date local  is a bit of an oddball  It means  show the date in the normal format  but using the local timezone     The timezone we use is orthogonal to the actual format  and there is no reason we could not have  localized iso8601   etc       This patch adds a  local  boolean field to  struct date mode   and drops the DATE LOCAL element from the date mode type enum  it s now just DATE NORMAL plus local 1     The new feature is accessible to users by adding  -local  to any date mode  e g    iso-local    and we retain  local  as an alias for  default-local  for backwards compatibility

User · Answer

I needed the same thing and found the following working for me   git log -n1 --pretty  format  cd  --date format   Y- m- d  H  M  S    The --date format formats the date output where the --pretty tells what to print

User · Answer

Be aware of the  date iso  format  it isn t exactly ISO 8601  See commit  466fb67  from Beat Bolli  bbolli   for Git 2 2 0  November 2014   pretty  provide a strict ISO 8601 date format     Git s  ISO  date format does not really conform to the ISO 8601 standard due to small differences  and it cannot be parsed by ISO 8601-only parsers  e g  those of XML toolchains       The output from  --date iso  deviates from ISO 8601 in these ways          a space instead of the T date time delimiter   a space between time and time zone   no colon between hours and minutes of the time zone         Add a strict ISO 8601 date format for displaying committer and author dates    Use the   aI  and   cI  format specifiers and add  --date iso-strict  or  --date iso8601-strict  date format names    See this thread for discussion

User · Answer

date -d    git log -n1 --format   at     Y m d H M   Note that this will convert to your local timezone  in case that matters for your use case

User · Answer

In addition to --date  relative local default iso iso-strict rfc short raw   as others have mentioned  you can also use a custom log date format with --date format   Y- m- d  H  M  S   This outputs something like 2016-01-13 11 32 13  NOTE  If you take a look at the commit linked to below  I believe you ll need at least Git v2 6 0-rc0 for this to work  In a full command it would be something like  git config --global alias lg  quot log --graph --decorate  -30 --all --date-order --date format   Y- m- d  H  M  S   --pretty format   C cyan  h Creset  C black bold  ad Creset C auto  d  s  quot    I haven t been able to find this in documentation anywhere  if someone knows where to find it  please comment  so I originally found the placeholders by trial and error  In my search for documentation on this I found a commit to Git itself that indicates the format is fed directly to strftime  Looking up strftime  here or here  the placeholders I found match the placeholders listed  The placeholders include   a      Abbreviated weekday name  A      Full weekday name  b      Abbreviated month name  B      Full month name  c      Date and time representation appropriate for locale  d      Day of month as decimal number  01     31   H      Hour in 24-hour format  00     23   I      Hour in 12-hour format  01     12   j      Day of year as decimal number  001     366   m      Month as decimal number  01     12   M      Minute as decimal number  00     59   p      Current locale s A M  P M  indicator for 12-hour clock  S      Second as decimal number  00     59   U      Week of year as decimal number  with Sunday as first day of week  00     53   w      Weekday as decimal number  0     6  Sunday is 0   W      Week of year as decimal number  with Monday as first day of week  00     53   x      Date representation for current locale  X      Time representation for current locale  y      Year without century  as decimal number  00     99   Y      Year with century  as decimal number  z   Z  Either the time-zone name or time zone abbreviation  depending on registry settings         Percent sign In a full command it would be something like git config --global alias lg  quot log --graph --decorate -30 --all --date-order --date format   Y- m- d  H  M  S  --pretty format   C cyan  h Creset  C black bold  ad Creset C auto  d  s  quot

User · Answer

I need the date in a special format    With Git 2 21  Q1 2019   a new date format  --date human  that morphs its output depending on how far the time is from the current time has been introduced    --date auto  can be used to use this new format when the output is going to the pager or to the terminal and otherwise the default format   See commit 110a6a1  commit b841d4f  29 Jan 2019   and commit 038a878  commit 2fd7c22  21 Jan 2019  by Stephen P  Smith       See commit acdd377  18 Jan 2019  by Linus Torvalds  torvalds    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit ecbe1be  07 Feb 2019        Add  human  date format documentation      Display date and time information in a format similar to how people write dates in other contexts    If the year isn t specified then  the reader infers the date is given is in the current year       By not displaying the redundant information  the reader concentrates on the information that is different    The patch reports relative dates based on information inferred from the date on the machine running the git command at the time the command is executed       While the format is more useful to humans by dropping inferred information  there is nothing that makes it actually human    If the  relative  date format wasn t already implemented  then using  relative  would have been appropriate       Add human date format tests       When using human several fields are suppressed depending on the time difference between the reference date and the local computer date            In cases where the difference is less than a year  the year field is suppressed     If the time is less than a day  the month and year is   suppressed       check date format human 18000        5 hours ago           5 hours ago check date format human 432000       Tue Aug 25 19 20      5 days ago check date format human 1728000      Mon Aug 10 19 20      3 weeks ago check date format human 13000000     Thu Apr 2 08 13       5 months ago check date format human 31449600     Aug 31 2008          12 months ago check date format human 37500000     Jun 22 2008           1 year  2 months ago check date format human 55188000     Dec 1 2007            1 year  9 months ago check date format human 630000000    Sep 13 1989          20 years ago         Replace the proposed  auto  mode with  auto        In addition to adding the  human  format  the patch added the auto keyword which could be used in the config file as an alternate way to specify the human format   Removing  auto  cleans up the  human  format interface       Added the ability to specify mode  foo  if the pager is being used by using auto foo syntax    Therefore   auto human  date mode defaults to human if we re using the pager    So you can do   git config --add log date auto human       and your  git log  commands will show the human-legible format unless   you re scripting things      Git 2 24  Q4 2019  simplified the code   See commit 47b27c9  commit 29f4332  12 Sep 2019  by Stephen P  Smith        Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 36d2fca  07 Oct 2019        Quit passing  now  to date code      Commit b841d4f  Add human format to test-tool  2019-01-28  Git  v2 21 0-rc0  added a get time   function which allows  GIT TEST DATE NOW in the environment to override the current time    So we no longer need to interpret that variable in cmd  date         Therefore  we can stop passing the  now  parameter down through the   date functions  since nobody uses them    Note that we do need to make sure all of the previous callers that took a  now  parameter are correctly using get time

User · Answer

After a long time looking for a way to get git log output the date in the format YYYY-MM-DD in a way that would work in less  I came up with the following format     ad x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08   along with the switch --date iso   This will print the date in ISO format  a long one   and then print 14 times the backspace character  0x08   which  in my terminal  effectively removes everything after the YYYY-MM-DD part  For example   git log --date iso --pretty format   ad x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 aN  s    This gives something like   2013-05-24 bruno This is the message of the latest commit  2013-05-22 bruno This is an older commit        What I did was create an alias named l with some tweaks on the format above  It shows the commit graph to the left  then the commit s hash  followed by the date  the shortnames  the refnames and the subject  The alias is as follows  in    gitconfig     alias          l   log --date-order --date iso --graph --full-history --all --pretty format   x08 x09 C red  h  C cyan  ad x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08  C bold blue  aN C reset  C bold yellow  d  C reset  s

User · Answer

You can use the field truncation option to avoid quite so many  x08 characters  For example   git log --pretty  format  h  s n t  lt  12 trunc  ci x08 x08   an  lt  ae gt     is equivalent to   git log --pretty  format  h  s n t ci x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08 x08   an  lt  ae gt     And quite a bit easier on the eyes   Better still  for this particular example  using  cd will honor the --date  lt format gt   so if you want YYYY-MM-DD  you can do this and avoid   lt  and  x08 entirely   git log --date short --pretty  format  h  s n t cd   an  lt  ae gt       I just noticed this was a bit circular with respect to the original post but I ll leave it in case others arrived here with the same search parameters I did

[git] How to change Git log date formats

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