Getting human readable date from Epoch into variable

Question

Okay, this is probably a very basic question; but, I'm just getting back in the saddle with Linux. I have a variable that hold an Epoch time called pauseTime. I need that variable to become human readable (something like 2012-06-13 13:48:30). I know I can just type in ``` date -d @133986838 //just a random number there ``` and that will print something similar. But I need to get the variable to hold that human readable date, instead of the epoch time... I keep running into errors with everything I'm trying. Any thoughts on how I can do this?

Accepted Answer

Well do this:

```
VARIABLENAME=$(date -d @133986838)
```

and then

```
export VARIABLENAME
```

or in Bash do directly:

```
export VARIABLENAME=$(date -d @133986838)
```

If you want formatting, say in the usual ISO format:

```
export ISODATE=$(date -d @133986838 +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
# or
EPOCHDATE=133986838
export ISODATE=$(date -d @$EPOCHDATE +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
```

The formats behind the `+` are explained in `man date`.

Note: `$()` is the modern form of the backticks. I.e. catching output from a command into a variable. However, `$()` makes some things easier, most notably escaping rules inside of it. So you should always prefer it over backticks if your shell understands it.

Getting human readable date from Epoch into variable

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