How to convert timestamps to dates in Bash

Question

I need a shell command or script that converts a Unix timestamp to a date  The input can come either from the first parameter or from stdin  allowing for the following usage patterns   ts2date 1267619929   and  echo 1267619929   ts2date   Both commands should output  Wed Mar  3 13 38 49 2010

User · Answer

I had to convert timestamps inline in my bash history to make sense to me.

Maybe the following coming from an answer to How do I replace a substring by the output of a shell command with sed, awk or such? could be interesting to other readers too. Kudos for the original sed inline code go to @Gabriel.

cat ~/.bash_history | sed "s/^#\([0-9]\+\)$/echo -n '#'; date -u --d @\1 '\+\%Y-\%m-\%d \%T'/e" | less

User · Answer

I use this cross-platform one-liner  date -d  1267619929 2 gt  dev null    date -r 1267619929  It should work in both macOS and later versions of popular Linux distributions

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While not pure bash  the following script will convert timestamps of length 13 in a string to their equivalent date in your local timezone using perl  timestamp to date sh     usr bin env bash IT   cat  dev stdin  re        0-9  13        while     IT     re     do   TIMESTAMP   BASH REMATCH 2     AS DATE   echo   TIMESTAMP    perl -pe  s    d  10     d  3   localtime  1 eg      IT    IT  TIMESTAMP  AS DATE       done echo   IT    input    timestamp   1573121629939   level   DEBUG   thread   http-nio-15372-exec-3   logger   org springframework web servlet mvc method annotation RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor     output    cat input   timestamp to date sh    timestamp   Thu Nov  7 06 13 49 2019   level   DEBUG   thread   http-nio-15372-exec-3   logger   org springframework web servlet mvc method annotation RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor

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Since Bash 4 2 you can use printf s   datefmt T format     printf     c T n  1267619929 Wed 03 Mar 2010 01 38 49 PM CET   That s nice  because it s a shell builtin  The format for datefmt is a string accepted by strftime 3   see man 3 strftime   Here  c is       c     The  preferred  date  and  time  representation  for the current              locale      Now if you want a script that accepts an argument and  if none is provided  reads stdin  you can proceed as      bin bash  if         then     printf     c T n       else     while read -r line  do         printf     c T n    line      done fi

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In this answer I copy Dennis Williamson s answer and modify it slightly to allow a vast speed increase when piping a column of many timestamps to the script  For example  piping 1000 timestamps to the original script with xargs -n1 on my machine took 6 929s as opposed to 0 027s with this modified version      bin bash LANG C if    -z   1     then     if    -p  dev stdin         input from a pipe     then         cat -   gawk    print strftime   c    1          else         echo  No timestamp given    gt  amp 2         exit     fi else     date -d   1   c fi

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You can get formatted date from timestamp like this  date    Y- m- d  H  M  S  -d   timestamp

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In OSX  or BSD  there s an equivalent -r flag which apparently takes a unix timestamp   Here s an example that runs date four times  once for the first date  to show what it is  one for the conversion to unix timestamp with  s  and finally  one which  with -r  converts what  s provides back to a string      date  date   s  date -r  date   s  Tue Oct 24 16 27 42 CDT 2017 1508880462 Tue Oct 24 16 27 42 CDT 2017   At least  seems to work on my machine     uname -a Darwin XXX-XXXXXXXX 16 7 0 Darwin Kernel Version 16 7 0  Thu Jun 15 17 36 27 PDT 2017  root xnu-3789 70 16 2 RELEASE X86 64 x86 64

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This version is similar to chiborg s answer  but it eliminates the need for the external tty and cat  It uses date  but could just as easily use gawk  You can change the shebang and replace the double square brackets with single ones and this will also run in sh      bin bash LANG C if    -z   1     then     if    -p  dev stdin         input from a pipe     then         read -r p     else         echo  No timestamp given    gt  amp 2         exit     fi else     p  1 fi date -d    p    c

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I have written a script that does this myself      bin bash LANG C if   -z   1     then     if       tty      not a tty     then             p  cat       else             echo  No timestamp given               exit     fi else     p  1 fi echo  p   gawk    print strftime   c    0

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You can use this simple awk script      bin gawk -f      print strftime   c    0       Sample usage     echo  1098181096      a awk  Tue 19 Oct 2004 03 18 16 AM PDT

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I use this when converting log files or monitoring them   tail -f  lt log file gt    gawk      printf strftime   c    1   for  i 2  i lt NF  i    printf  i      print  NF

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date -r  lt number gt    works for me on Mac nbsp OS nbsp X

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some example      date Tue Mar 22 16 47 06 CST 2016    date -d  Tue Mar 22 16 47 06 CST 2016     s  1458636426    date   s 1458636453    date -d  1458636426 Tue Mar 22 16 47 06 CST 2016    date --date   1458636426  Tue Mar 22 16 47 06 CST 2016

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On later versions of common Linux distributions you can use   date -d  1267619929

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You can use GNU date  for example     sec 1267619929   date -d  UTC 1970-01-01  sec secs    or     date -ud  1267619929

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In PHP   unix time   1256571985   echo date  Y-m-d H i s   unix time

[bash] How to convert timestamps to dates in Bash?

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