Concatenating text and command output in Bash script to output to file

Question

I'm writing a bash script in FreeBSD that appends commands to a log file. Before I execute the commands that will append the log data, I want to print a line in the file which shows the current date above the data, like this:

---Tue Aug 20 17:26:37 EDT 2019---

I know that I can use the date command to output the timestamp, but I'm not sure how to include the "---" before and after the timestamp to add to the file. What's the simplest way to do this?

So many choices. printf '-- %s --' "$(date)" or printf '-- '; date | tr -d \\n; printf ' --' — William Pursell
– William Pursell, Commented Aug 20, 2019 at 21:43
If your implementation of date supports it: date +'-- %a %b %d %T %Z --' — William Pursell
– William Pursell, Commented Aug 20, 2019 at 21:48

melpomene · Accepted Answer · 2019-08-20 21:48:43Z

2

You can pass a format string to date:

date '+---%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y---'

answered Aug 20, 2019 at 21:48

melpomene

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1 Comment

Jason O Over a year ago

Thats perfect! Thank you all for the feedback :-).

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