In order to get the current timestamp and not the time of when a fixed variable is defined, the trick is to use a function and not a variable:
#!/bin/bash # Define a timestamp function timestamp() { date +"%T" # current time } # do something... timestamp # print timestamp # do something else... timestamp # print another timestamp # continue...
If you don’t like the format given by the %T
specifier you can combine the other time conversion specifiers accepted by date
. For GNU date
, you can find the complete list of these specifiers in the official documentation here: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/Time-conversion-specifiers.html#Time-conversion-specifiers