coreutils: date invocation

 
 21.1 ‘date’: Print or set system date and time
 ==============================================
 
 Synopses:
 
      date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
      date [-u|--utc|--universal] [ MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss] ]
 
    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 Mar  3 13:47:51 PST 2005’.
 
    Normally, ‘date’ uses the time zone rules indicated by the ‘TZ’
 environment variable, or the system default rules if ‘TZ’ is not set.
 SeeSpecifying the Time Zone with ‘TZ’ (libc)TZ Variable.
 
    If given an argument that starts with a ‘+’, ‘date’ prints the
 current date and time (or the date and time specified by the ‘--date’
 option, see below) in the format defined by that argument, which is
 similar to that of the ‘strftime’ function.  Except for conversion
 specifiers, which start with ‘%’, characters in the format string are
 printed unchanged.  The conversion specifiers are described below.
 
    An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value
 indicates failure.
 

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