# Dates with the Date Command


Hi this is Brian and today we're going to look at the `date` command and how to
use it to display dates and look at dates in the future and in the past.

First, a small disclaimer: Some of the examples in this only work with the GNU version of `date` found on Ubuntu and other Linux systems. If you're on macOS, you won't have this version, as macOS uses the BSD version of date with different options. You can install the GNU version of date along with many other tools using the Homebrew package manager to install the `coreutils` package. That's beyond the scope of this video though.o

Alright, let's look at the `date` command.


The `date` command, by itself, displays today's date and time:

```command
date
```

You can pass options to the date command to show different outputs. This shows the 
month, date, and two-digit year:

```command
date +%D
```

```
1/23/19
```

Let's show the full day name, the full month, day, and four digit year. I'll use quotes so I can
put in a comma:

```command
date "+%A, %B %d %Y"
```

```
Wednesday, January 23 2019
```

You can look at the `man` pages for lots of other options on formatting with date.

You can also use the date command to look at dates in the future. 


Suppose someone wants to meet with you next Monday. You'd like to know what date that is. You can use the Date command to get that answer pretty quickly:

```command
date --date "next Monday"
```

You can also figure out the date 30 days from now:

```command
date --date "30 days"
```

or even see the date 30 days in the past:

```command
date --date "30 days ago"
```

Finally, if you use the date inside of command substitution, you can store it in a variable or use it in a script:

```command
echo "Copyright $(date +%Y) Brian P. Hogan"
```

As you can see, you can do a lot with the date command. You can see the date and time, format the output, look ahead or behind days or even months, and use its output in creative ways.