Create timestamp variable in bash script

bash variables timestamp
Dan picture Dan · Jun 12, 2013 · Viewed 631.5k times · Source

I am trying to create a timestamp variable in a shell script to make the logging a little easier. I want to create the variable at the beginning of the script and have it print out the current time whenever I issue echo $timestamp. It proving to be more difficult then I thought. Here are some things I've tried:

timestamp="(date +"%T")" echo prints out (date +"%T")

timestamp="$(date +"%T")" echo prints the time when the variable was initialized.

Other things I've tried are just slight variations that didn't work any better. Does anyone know how to accomplish what I'm trying to do?

Answer

dchakarov picture dchakarov · Nov 13, 2013

If you want to get unix timestamp, then you need to use:

timestamp=$(date +%s)

%T will give you just the time; same as %H:%M:%S (via http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-formatting-dates-for-display/)

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