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Comments on How to set the default time format in Linux Debian.

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How to set the default time format in Linux Debian.

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How to set the default time format in Linux? For example to set the format the date command outputs when run with no parameters.

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posted 7 months ago

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This question cannot be answered in a way that is helpful to anyone. It's not possible to learn something from possible answers, except for the solution for the specific problem of the asker.

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You can define the LC_TIME environment variable. In ~/.profile if you start you session in a login shell or else ~/.bashrc, put

export LC_TIME=ru_RU.UTF-8

For example,

% LC_TIME=ru_RU.UTF-8 date
Сб 07 окт 2023 13:39:21 CEST

will make the output format be in Russian,

That only works if you already have that locale enabled (or, better said, generated), which you can check with locale -a. If it is not generated yet, find the corresponding line in /etc/locale.gen, remove the # from it and run locale-gen.

In a desktop environment, there might be a corresponding option in the localization settings.

All the environment variables heeded by date specifically are found in the POSIX specification.

And the locale section lists the variable in more details, as well as which other functions must respect it.

There is an expectation, but not a guarantee, that time related programs and functions will respect that variable.

posted 7 months ago

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Don't understand that. I was asking about the time format. How is that bind to a locale? Shouldn't th... (4 comments)

Quasímodo‭ wrote 7 months ago

Well, each locale does have a different time format.

$ LC_TIME=en_US.utf8 date +%x~%X
10/09/2023~01:08:12 PM
$ LC_TIME=ru_RU.utf8 date +%x~%X
09.10.2023~13:08:17

The question does not match what you are asking in comments. Also note that where you are ≠ where your computer is configured to be. These details matter and the lack thereof lead to a different answer than the one you apparently wanted.

H_H‭ wrote 7 months ago · edited 7 months ago

"The question does not match what you are asking in comments"

My question is how to configure the datetime format. With that i mean, how can i set a specific format, for example a string that is used in strftime(). I don't see a difference from the comment to the original question. It is very confusing for me that that should depend on a locale.

Yes where you are ≠ where your computer is configured to be. I should have said "regardless of where my computer is configured to be". sorry.

Does that mean i have to generate every possible locale, check every possible locale if the format matches what i want, and if there is no locale that has this time format, i am out of luck?

Quasímodo‭ wrote 7 months ago · edited 7 months ago

My question is how to configure the datetime format.

Isn't that simply what you wrote in the other comment? I.e. date +%Y-%m-%d_%T?

Does that mean i have to generate every possible locale, check every possible locale if the format matches what i want, and if there is no locale that has this time format, i am out of luck?

If you want a plain date to return that specific format, it's impossible without verifying each locale as you said, because, as per the specification I linked to:

STDOUT

When no formatting operand is specified, the output in the POSIX locale shall be equivalent to specifying:

date "+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y"