NAME¶

DESCRIPTION¶

DISPLAYING TIME SPANS¶

2h 30min

All specified time values are meant to be added up. The above hence refers to 150 minutes. Display is locale-independent, only English names for the time units are used.

PARSING TIME SPANS¶

If no time unit is specified, generally seconds are assumed, but some exceptions exist and are marked as such. In a few cases "ns", "nsec" is accepted too, where the granularity of the time span permits this. Parsing is generally locale-independent, non-English names for the time units are not accepted.

Examples for valid time span specifications:

2 h
2hours
48hr
1y 12month
55s500ms
300ms20s 5day

One can use the timespan command of systemd-analyze(1) to normalise a textual time span for testing and validation purposes.

DISPLAYING TIMESTAMPS¶

Fri 2012-11-23 23:02:15 CET

The weekday is printed in the abbreviated English language form. The formatting is locale-independent.

In some cases timestamps are shown in the UTC timezone instead of the local timezone, which is indicated via the "UTC" timezone specifier in the output.

In some cases timestamps are shown with microsecond granularity. In this case the sub-second remainder is separated by a full stop from the seconds component.

PARSING TIMESTAMPS¶

A timestamp is considered invalid if a weekday is specified and the date does not match the specified day of the week.

When parsing, systemd will also accept a few special placeholders instead of timestamps: "now" may be used to refer to the current time (or of the invocation of the command that is currently executed). "today", "yesterday", and "tomorrow" refer to 00:00:00 of the current day, the day before, or the next day, respectively.

When parsing, systemd will also accept relative time specifications. A time span (see above) that is prefixed with "+" is evaluated to the current time plus the specified time span. Correspondingly, a time span that is prefixed with "-" is evaluated to the current time minus the specified time span. Instead of prefixing the time span with "+" or "-", it may also be suffixed with a space and the word "left" or "ago".

Finally, a timespan prefixed with "@" is evaluated relative to the UNIX time epoch 1st Jan, 1970, 00:00.

Examples for valid timestamps and their normalized form (assuming the current time was 2012-11-23 18:15:22 and the timezone was UTC+8, for example TZ=Asia/Shanghai):

  Fri 2012-11-23 11:12:13 → Fri 2012-11-23 11:12:13
      2012-11-23 11:12:13 → Fri 2012-11-23 11:12:13
  2012-11-23 11:12:13 UTC → Fri 2012-11-23 19:12:13
               2012-11-23 → Fri 2012-11-23 00:00:00
                 12-11-23 → Fri 2012-11-23 00:00:00
                 11:12:13 → Fri 2012-11-23 11:12:13
                    11:12 → Fri 2012-11-23 11:12:00
                      now → Fri 2012-11-23 18:15:22
                    today → Fri 2012-11-23 00:00:00
                today UTC → Fri 2012-11-23 16:00:00
                yesterday → Fri 2012-11-22 00:00:00
                 tomorrow → Fri 2012-11-24 00:00:00
tomorrow Pacific/Auckland → Thu 2012-11-23 19:00:00
                 +3h30min → Fri 2012-11-23 21:45:22
                      -5s → Fri 2012-11-23 18:15:17
                11min ago → Fri 2012-11-23 18:04:22
              @1395716396 → Tue 2014-03-25 03:59:56

Note that timestamps displayed by remote systems with a non-matching timezone are usually not parsable locally, as the timezone component is not understood (unless it happens to be "UTC").

Timestamps may also be specified with microsecond granularity. The sub-second remainder is expected separated by a full stop from the seconds component. Example:

2014-03-25 03:59:56.654563

In some cases, systemd will display a relative timestamp (relative to the current time, or the time of invocation of the command) instead of or in addition to an absolute timestamp as described above. A relative timestamp is formatted as follows:

2 months 5 days ago

Note that a relative timestamp is also accepted where a timestamp is expected (see above).

CALENDAR EVENTS¶

Thu,Fri 2012-*-1,5 11:12:13

The above refers to 11:12:13 of the first or fifth day of any month of the year 2012, but only if that day is a Thursday or Friday.

The weekday specification is optional. If specified, it should consist of one or more English language weekday names, either in the abbreviated (Wed) or non-abbreviated (Wednesday) form (case does not matter), separated by commas. Specifying two weekdays separated by ".." refers to a range of continuous weekdays. "," and ".." may be combined freely.

In the date and time specifications, any component may be specified as "*" in which case any value will match. Alternatively, each component can be specified as a list of values separated by commas. Values may be suffixed with "/" and a repetition value, which indicates that the value itself and the value plus all multiples of the repetition value are matched. Two values separated by ".." may be used to indicate a range of values; ranges may also be followed with "/" and a repetition value.

A date specification may use "~" to indicate the last day(s) in a month. For example, "*-02~03" means "the third last day in February," and "Mon *-05~07/1" means "the last Monday in May."

The seconds component may contain decimal fractions both in the value and the repetition. All fractions are rounded to 6 decimal places.

Either time or date specification may be omitted, in which case the current day and 00:00:00 is implied, respectively. If the second component is not specified, ":00" is assumed.

Timezone can be specified as the literal string "UTC", or the local timezone, similar to the supported syntax of timestamps (see above), or the timezone in the IANA timezone database format (also see above).

The following special expressions may be used as shorthands for longer normalized forms:

    minutely → *-*-* *:*:00
      hourly → *-*-* *:00:00
       daily → *-*-* 00:00:00
     monthly → *-*-01 00:00:00
      weekly → Mon *-*-* 00:00:00
      yearly → *-01-01 00:00:00
   quarterly → *-01,04,07,10-01 00:00:00
semiannually → *-01,07-01 00:00:00
   

Examples for valid timestamps and their normalized form:

  Sat,Thu,Mon..Wed,Sat..Sun → Mon..Thu,Sat,Sun *-*-* 00:00:00
      Mon,Sun 12-*-* 2,1:23 → Mon,Sun 2012-*-* 01,02:23:00
                    Wed *-1 → Wed *-*-01 00:00:00
           Wed..Wed,Wed *-1 → Wed *-*-01 00:00:00
                 Wed, 17:48 → Wed *-*-* 17:48:00
Wed..Sat,Tue 12-10-15 1:2:3 → Tue..Sat 2012-10-15 01:02:03
                *-*-7 0:0:0 → *-*-07 00:00:00
                      10-15 → *-10-15 00:00:00
        monday *-12-* 17:00 → Mon *-12-* 17:00:00
  Mon,Fri *-*-3,1,2 *:30:45 → Mon,Fri *-*-01,02,03 *:30:45
       12,14,13,12:20,10,30 → *-*-* 12,13,14:10,20,30:00
            12..14:10,20,30 → *-*-* 12..14:10,20,30:00
  mon,fri *-1/2-1,3 *:30:45 → Mon,Fri *-01/2-01,03 *:30:45
             03-05 08:05:40 → *-03-05 08:05:40
                   08:05:40 → *-*-* 08:05:40
                      05:40 → *-*-* 05:40:00
     Sat,Sun 12-05 08:05:40 → Sat,Sun *-12-05 08:05:40
           Sat,Sun 08:05:40 → Sat,Sun *-*-* 08:05:40
           2003-03-05 05:40 → 2003-03-05 05:40:00
 05:40:23.4200004/3.1700005 → *-*-* 05:40:23.420000/3.170001
             2003-02..04-05 → 2003-02..04-05 00:00:00
       2003-03-05 05:40 UTC → 2003-03-05 05:40:00 UTC
                 2003-03-05 → 2003-03-05 00:00:00
                      03-05 → *-03-05 00:00:00
                     hourly → *-*-* *:00:00
                      daily → *-*-* 00:00:00
                  daily UTC → *-*-* 00:00:00 UTC
                    monthly → *-*-01 00:00:00
                     weekly → Mon *-*-* 00:00:00
    weekly Pacific/Auckland → Mon *-*-* 00:00:00 Pacific/Auckland
                     yearly → *-01-01 00:00:00
                   annually → *-01-01 00:00:00
                      *:2/3 → *-*-* *:02/3:00

Calendar events are used by timer units, see systemd.timer(5) for details.

Use the calendar command of systemd-analyze(1) to validate and normalize calendar time specifications for testing purposes. The tool also calculates when a specified calendar event would elapse next.

SEE ALSO¶