Common things one wants to do with date: #what day does xmas fall on, this year date --date='25 Dec' +%A #What time is it on West coast of US #(use tzselect to get TZ to use) TZ="America/Los_Angeles" date #convert number of seconds since the epoch to a date date --date '1970-01-01 UTC 130204800 seconds' -- Pádraig Brady - http://www.pixelbeat.org