Current date

date [+format]

date
date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
date -d '+7 days' '+%Y-%m-%d'
date -u

Sat Apr  4 14:22:01 UTC 2026
2026-04-04 14:22:01
2026-04-11

Note Common format tokens: %Y (year), %m (month), %d (day), %H (hour), %M (minute), %S (second), %s (Unix epoch). -d adjusts the date (GNU only; on macOS use -v). -u outputs UTC. Useful for timestamped filenames: backup_$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).tar.gz.

from datetime import datetime, date, timedelta

from datetime import datetime, timedelta

now = datetime.now()
print(now.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"))

deadline = now + timedelta(days=7, hours=3)
print(f"Due: {deadline:%B %d, %Y}")

parsed = datetime.strptime("2026-04-04", "%Y-%m-%d")
print(parsed.date())

2026-04-04 14:30
Due: April 11, 2026
2026-04-04

Note For timezone-aware datetimes, use datetime.now(tz=timezone.utc) instead of datetime.utcnow() which is naive and deprecated since 3.12.

CURRENT_DATE
CURRENT_TIME
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
NOW()

SELECT
  CURRENT_DATE AS today,
  CURRENT_TIMESTAMP AS right_now,
  NOW() AS also_now;

-- today      | right_now                    | also_now
-- 2025-11-20 | 2025-11-20 14:35:22.123456+00 | 2025-11-20 14:35:22.123456+00

Note CURRENT_DATE, CURRENT_TIME, and CURRENT_TIMESTAMP are ANSI standard and work everywhere. NOW() is a function that does the same as CURRENT_TIMESTAMP but is not standard SQL. In a transaction, these return the time the transaction started, not the current wall clock time.