Get the date (a day before current time) in Bash

bash unix date solaris

318,245

Solution 1

Sorry not mentioning I on Solaris system. As such, the -date switch is not available on Solaris bash.

I find out I can get the previous date with little trick on timezone.

DATE=`TZ=MYT+16 date +%Y-%m-%d_%r`
echo $DATE

Solution 2

if you have GNU date and i understood you correctly

$ date +%Y:%m:%d -d "yesterday"
2009:11:09

$ date +%Y:%m:%d -d "1 day ago"
2009:11:09

Solution 3

If you have BSD (OSX) date you can do it like this:

date -j -v-1d
Wed Dec 14 15:34:14 CET 2011

Or if you want to do date calculations on an arbitrary date:

date -j -v-1d -f "%Y-%m-%d" "2011-09-01" "+%Y-%m-%d"
2011-08-31

Solution 4

date --date='-1 day'

Solution 5

MAC OSX

For yesterday's date:

date -v-1d +%F

where 1d defines current day minus 1 day. Similarly,

date -v-1w +%F - for previous week date

date -v-1m +%F - for previous month date

IF YOU HAVE GNU DATE,

date --date="1 day ago"

More info: https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-unix-get-yesterdays-tomorrows-date.html

View more solutions

318,245

conandor

Updated on January 20, 2020

Comments

conandor over 4 years

How can I print the date which is a day before current time in Bash?
- conandor over 14 years
  
  Tried date but seems like there is no -d switch in Solaris 10's bash
- conandor almost 14 years
  
  I found another great solution by installing gnu date (coreutil package) from sunfreeware.
- frankster over 11 years
  
  nor is there a -d switch in AIX's date
- Chris F.A. Johnson over 11 years
  
  The --date or -d option is only available in GNU date
- Amir Ali Akbari over 7 years
  
  See stackoverflow.com/q/15374752/462865 for a DST-safe version of this question.
Peter Lindqvist over 14 years

+1 for correction, interesting method, even though it's a bit verbose.
martin clayton over 14 years

What about if today is the 1st January?
conandor over 14 years

I found most are as suggested answer but -d switch is not found in Solaris's date
jlliagre over 12 years

This method is not 100% reliable (about 98% actually) if you happen to live in a place using daylight saving time.
Karthick S over 12 years

Hi medoix, I am not able to find the meaning of ${$#}. I know that $# stands for the number of arguments to a script/function. But I am not able to relate to this. Please help.
zhihong about 11 years

For the usage on Ubuntu with date function: $(date +%Y:%m:%d -d "1 day ago"), output is: 2013:04:21. And if you want the date 10 days before, you can use $(date +%Y:%m:%d -d "10 days ago") or $(date +%Y:%m:%d -d "10 day ago")
misguided almost 11 years

This doesn't work for the previus day on change of month . For example today is 1 July , 2013 , the result being printed out is 2013-6-1347, whereas the expected result is 2013-6-30
Anton Roslov almost 11 years

Instead of the 3 lines between the "fi" try "day=echo $(cal $month $year)|tr ' ' '\n'|tail -n 1"
kasterma almost 10 years

On OS X you can install coreutils through brew: see stackoverflow.com/questions/15374752/…
bgs about 8 years

date -v-1d on OSX (minus), -v+1d (plus)
Noah Spurrier almost 8 years

This bash function will work on both Linux and OSX. Basically it tries the GNU Linux style first. If that fails it tries the OSX style. Call it with an argument of the number of days in the past you want the date. If you pass no argument it assume 0 days. This code is a one-liner, so cut and paste should work -- no line endings assumed. date_days_past () { days_past=${1:-0}; if ! date -v-${days_past}d +%Y%m%d 2>/dev/null; then date --date="-${days_past} day" +%Y%m%d; fi }
kuanb about 7 years

Erros on macOS Sierra: date: illegal option -- -
sumitsu about 6 years

You need to install the GNU version of date, available through the coreutils package, to make this syntax work on macOS. If you're using Homebrew, you can install it via brew install coreutils, after which you should be able to use GNU date through the gdate command. See: topbug.net/blog/2013/04/14/…
phray2002 almost 5 years

For Solaris, use one time timezone bash $(TZ=America/New_York date +%Y-%m-%d)
phray2002 almost 5 years

Not exactly, you can use bash $(TZ=America/New_York date +%Y-%m-%d)
Tõnu Samuel over 4 years

date -d "yesterday 13:00" '+%F' is shorter
Andrew Henle over 4 years

That results in date: illegal option: -d on Solaris. Your answer that relies on non-portable GNU extensions to the POSIX-standard date utility for a question about the non-GNU Solaris platform.