Get current time in seconds since the Epoch on Linux Bash

Question

I need something simple like date  but in seconds since 1970 instead of the current date  hours  minutes  and seconds   date doesn t seem to offer that option  Is there an easy way

User · Answer

With most Awk implementations   awk  BEGIN  srand    print srand

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Just to add  Get the seconds since epoch Jan 1 1970  for any given date e g Oct 21 1973    date -d  Oct 21 1973    s     Convert the number of seconds back to date  date --date  120024000      The command date is pretty versatile  Another cool thing you can do with date shamelessly copied from date --help     Show the local time for 9AM next Friday on the west coast of the US  date --date  TZ  America Los Angeles  09 00 next Fri    Better yet  take some time to read the man page  http   man7 org linux man-pages man1 date 1 html

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So far  all the answers use the external program date   Since Bash 4 2  printf has a new modifier   dateformat T that  when used with argument -1 outputs the current date with format given by dateformat  handled by strftime 3   man 3 strftime for informations about the formats    So  for a pure Bash solution   printf     s T n  -1   or if you need to store the result in a variable var   printf -v var     s T  -1   No external programs and no subshells   Since Bash 4 3  it s even possible to not specify the -1   printf -v var     s T     but it might be wiser to always give the argument -1 nonetheless    If you use -2 as argument instead of -1  Bash will use the time the shell was started instead of the current date   This can be used to compute elapsed times    printf -v beg     s T n  -2   printf -v now     s T n  -1   echo beg  beg now  now elapsed    now-beg   beg 1583949610 now 1583953032 elapsed 3422

User · Answer

use this bash script  my   bin epoch       bin bash    get seconds since epoch test  x 1     x  amp  amp  date   s  amp  amp  exit 0    or convert epoch seconds to date format  see  man date  for options  EPOCH   1  shift date -d    EPOCH

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This is an extension to what  pellucide has done  but for Macs   To determine the number of seconds since epoch  Jan 1 1970  for any given date  e g  Oct 21 1973     date -j -f   b  d  Y  T   Oct 21 1973 00 00 00     s  120034800   Please note  that for completeness  I have added the time part to the format  The reason being is that date will take whatever date part you gave it and add the current time to the value provided  For example  if you execute the above command at 4 19PM  without the  00 00 00  part  it will add the time automatically  Such that  Oct 21 1973  will be parsed as  Oct 21 1973 16 19 00   That may not be what you want   To convert your timestamp back to a date     date -j -r 120034800 Sun Oct 21 00 00 00 PDT 1973   Apple s man page for the date implementation  https   developer apple com library mac documentation Darwin Reference ManPages man1 date 1 html

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This should work   date   s

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Pure bash solution  Since bash 5 0  released on 7 Jan 2019  you can use the built-in variable EPOCHSECONDS     echo  EPOCHSECONDS 1547624774   There is also EPOCHREALTIME which includes fractions of seconds     echo  EPOCHREALTIME 1547624774 371215   EPOCHREALTIME can be converted to micro-seconds    s  by removing the decimal point  This might be of interest when using bash s built-in arithmetic    expression    which can only handle integers      echo   EPOCHREALTIME     1547624774371215   In all examples from above the printed time values are equal for better readability  In reality the time values would differ since each command takes a small amount of time to be executed

[linux] Get current time in seconds since the Epoch on Linux, Bash

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