11.2. Date and Time
If you don't like the built-ins for date and time, extracting the same
information from the date command is relatively
easy. Examples already seen in this HOWTO include
date +%H%M,
which will put in the hour in 24 hour format, and the minute.
date "+%A, %d %B %Y" will give something like
"Sunday, 06 June 1999". For a full list
of the interpreted sequences, type date --help or
man date.
Relative speed: "date ..." takes about 0.12 seconds on an unloaded 486SX25.