Get current time in hours and minutes

Question

I'm trying to collect information from a system and I need to get the current time in hours and minutes.

Currently I have:

date | awk '{print $4}' 

which outputs something like:

16:18:54 

How do I chop off the seconds?

Answer 1

Provide a format string:

date +"%H:%M" 

Running man date will give all the format options

%a     locale's abbreviated weekday name (e.g., Sun) %A     locale's full weekday name (e.g., Sunday) %b     locale's abbreviated month name (e.g., Jan) %B     locale's full month name (e.g., January) %c     locale's date and time (e.g., Thu Mar  3 23:05:25 2005) %C     century; like %Y, except omit last two digits (e.g., 20) %d     day of month (e.g., 01) %D     date; same as %m/%d/%y %e     day of month, space padded; same as %_d %F     full date; same as %Y-%m-%d %g     last two digits of year of ISO week number (see %G) %G     year of ISO week number (see %V); normally useful only with %V %h     same as %b %H     hour (00..23) %I     hour (01..12) %j     day of year (001..366) %k     hour, space padded ( 0..23); same as %_H %l     hour, space padded ( 1..12); same as %_I %m     month (01..12) %M     minute (00..59) %n     a newline %N     nanoseconds (000000000..999999999) %p     locale's equivalent of either AM or PM; blank if not known %P     like %p, but lower case %r     locale's 12-hour clock time (e.g., 11:11:04 PM) %R     24-hour hour and minute; same as %H:%M %s     seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC %S     second (00..60) %t     a tab %T     time; same as %H:%M:%S %u     day of week (1..7); 1 is Monday %U     week number of year, with Sunday as first day of week (00..53) %V     ISO week number, with Monday as first day of week (01..53) %w     day of week (0..6); 0 is Sunday %W     week number of year, with Monday as first day of week (00..53) %x     locale's date representation (e.g., 12/31/99) %X     locale's time representation (e.g., 23:13:48) %y     last two digits of year (00..99) %Y     year %z     +hhmm numeric time zone (e.g., -0400) %:z    +hh:mm numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00) %::z   +hh:mm:ss numeric time zone (e.g., -04:00:00) %:::z  numeric time zone with : to necessary precision (e.g., -04, +05:30) %Z     alphabetic time zone abbreviation (e.g., EDT)