YYYY-MM-DD format date in a Shell Script

The Linux date command is used to get the current date and time. You can easily customize the results by using the arguments. In this how-to tutorial, you will learn to format the date as “YYYY-MM-DD” in the bash shell.

Use one of the below methods to get the current date in “YYYY-MM-DD” format.

• Using date command – To print the results in YYYY-MM-DD format, you can use %Y-%m-%d or %F options with date command. Here the %F option is an alias for %Y-%m-%d.
  date +%F #Output: 2022-07-25 date +%Y-%m-%d #Output: 2022-07-25

  1 2	date +%F         #Output: 2022-07-25 date +%Y-%m-%d   #Output: 2022-07-25

• Using printf command – Rather than using the date command, the print command also provides a built-in date formatted in bash (>=4.2).
  printf '%(%Y-%m-%d)T\n'

  1	printf '%(%Y-%m-%d)T\n'

The above methods print the results on standard output. You can also store the results in a variable like: