Convert Unix timestamp to a date string

Question

Is there a quick, one-liner way to convert a Unix timestamp to a date from the Unix command line?

date might work, except it's rather awkward to specify each element (month, day, year, hour, etc.), and I can't figure out how to get it to work properly. It seems like there might be an easier way — am I missing something?

Answer 1

With date from GNU coreutils you can do:

date -d "@$TIMESTAMP"

# date -d @0
Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 EST 1969

(From: BASH: Convert Unix Timestamp to a Date)

On OS X, use date -r.

date -r "$TIMESTAMP"

Alternatively, use strftime(). It's not available directly from the shell, but you can access it via gawk. The %c specifier displays the timestamp in a locale-dependent manner.

echo "$TIMESTAMP" | gawk '{print strftime("%c", $0)}'

# echo 0 | gawk '{print strftime("%c", $0)}'
Wed 31 Dec 1969 07:00:00 PM EST