After a long time, I encountered this problem again.
Could you add the following to the example to the man page:
```txt
Show the current date and time using a custom format
$ date "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"
```
Feel free to edit wording.
MCP
On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 2:00 PM Michael Partridge <mcp...@nau.edu> wrote:
> > It is, although you may have missed it.
>
> Yes I definitely did, thank you. I replied solely to Glenn instead of
> reply all. My apologies.
>
> > >
> > > I think this default format string should appear in the man page as
> > > well.
> >
> > It already does (since the man page is generated from the --help output):
>
> I meant the default format string as listed in the GNU manual I linked:
> `'+%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y'`.
>
> https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/date-invocation.html#date-invocation
>
>
> MCP
>
> On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 1:06 PM Eric Blake <ebl...@redhat.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 12, 2021 at 10:20:28AM -0700, Michael Partridge wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > I am reading the date man page for the first time and it seems that a
> `+`
> > > must prefix a format string, but this requirement or behavior is not
> > > documented.
> >
> > It is, although you may have missed it.
> >
> > $ date --help |head -n1
> > Usage: date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
> >
> > >
> > > I think this default format string should appear in the man page as
> > > well.
> >
> > It already does (since the man page is generated from the --help output):
> >
> > NAME
> > date - print or set the system date and time
> >
> > SYNOPSIS
> > date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
> > date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
> >
> > In both places, the argument is written +FORMAT to make it obvious
> > that without a leading +, you are instead asking date to parse a
> > 'MMDDhhmm' argument for setting the system date (likely to fail if not
> > executed as root).
> >
> > That said, if you have a proposed patch to make the existing
> > documentation clearer, we're open to the idea.
> >
> > --
> > Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
> > Red Hat, Inc. +1-919-301-3266
> > Virtualization: qemu.org | libvirt.org
> >
>
