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UNIX Timestamp Formats

  • This format is used all over the place: many programming language datestamps, bash, MySQL, most UNIX prompts…
  • This data is from the man page from strftime, distilled down to basics. This is intended as a cheat-sheet, not an extremely-accurate dissertation. Ergo:
  • Some entries (marked with an asterisk) have extremely specific and perhaps unconventional ways of being counted; there are several ways to determine the week of the month, for example. I don’t bother trying to explain them here, because I don’t care. If you do, check out the strftime man page.
  • Some examples are locale-specific. The examples are from a US English locale.
Format Name Example(s)
%A Full weekday name Monday
%a Abbreviated weekday name Mon.
%B Full month name January
%b Abbreviated month name Jan.
%C First two digits of year 20 (for 2009)
%c Time and date Fri May 29 18:42:15 2009
%D Short for %m/%d/%y 05/29/09
%d Day of the month (leading zero if applicable) 09 or 27
%e Day of the month (no leading zero) 9 or 27
%F Short for %Y-%m-%d 2009-05-29
%G Full year* containing “the greater part of the week” 2009
%g Last two digits of %g 09
%H Hour, 24-hour format, leading zero if applicable 17 or 09
%h Same as %b: abbrev. month name Oct.
%I Hour, 12-hour format 11 or 07
%j Day of the year 365
%k Hour, 24-hour format, without leading zero 17 or 9
%l Hour, 12-hour format, without leading zero 11 or 7
%M Minute, with leading zero if applicable 57 or 05
%m Month, with leading zero if applicable 08
%n Line break / newline (for formatting)
%p AM or PM AM
%R Same as %H:%M 18:53
%r Same as %I:%M:%S %p 06:53:43 PM
%S Second, with leading zero 07 or 59
%s Number of seconds since epoch 1243637689
%T Same as %H:%M:%S 18:55:09
%t Tab (for formatting)
%U Week (number) of the year* 51
%v Same as %e-%b-%Y 29-May-2009
%W Week (number) of the year* 21
%w Day of the week. Caveat: 0-6 (Sun-Sat) 6
%X Time in local format 19:00:08
%x Date in local format 05/29/2009
%Y Full year 2009
%y Short year (last two digits) 99
%Z Time zone name EDT
%z Time zone difference from UTC (-0400: behind 4 hours, 00 minutes) -0400
%+ Local date and time format Fri May 29 19:06:31 EDT 2009
%% A literal percent sign %