Time Formats

Language:

The following table shows some of the ways in which different locales write 11:59 P.M. You can display the time format on your current locale by issuing the following command:

$ date +%X

Table 1-2 International Time Formats

Locale	Description	Time Format
`C`	-	23:59:00
`en_US.UTF-8`	English, U.S.A.	11:59:00 PM
`es_US.UTF-8`	Spanish, U.S.A.	11:59:00 p.m.
`mr_IN.UTF-8`	Marathi, India	11-59-00 pm
`sq_AL.ISO8859-2`	Albanian, Albania	11.59.00.MD
`ja_JP.UTF-8`	Japanese, Japan	23???59???00???
`ko_KR.UTF-8`	Korean, Korea	??????11??? 59??? 00???
`zh_CN.UTF-8`	Simplified Chinese, China	23???59???00???

Time can be represented by both a 12-hour clock and a 24-hour clock. The hour and minute separator can be either a colon ( : ) or a period ( . ) or a dash ( - ).

Time zone splits occur between and within countries. Although a time zone can be described in terms of the number of hours it is ahead of, or behind, Coordinated Universal Time, UTC (or Greenwich Mean Time, GMT), this number is not always an integer. For example, Newfoundland is in a time zone that is half an hour different from the adjacent time zone.

Daylight Saving Time (DST) starts and ends on dates that can vary from country to country. Many countries do not implement DST at all. Additionally, Daylight Saving Time can vary within a time zone. In the U.S. for example, the implementation is a state decision.