Command to get time in milliseconds Command to get time in milliseconds bash bash

Command to get time in milliseconds


  • date +"%T.%N" returns the current time with nanoseconds.

    06:46:41.431857000
  • date +"%T.%6N" returns the current time with nanoseconds rounded to the first 6 digits, which is microseconds.

    06:47:07.183172
  • date +"%T.%3N" returns the current time with nanoseconds rounded to the first 3 digits, which is milliseconds.

    06:47:42.773

In general, every field of the date command's format can be given an optional field width.


date +%s%N returns the number of seconds + current nanoseconds.

Therefore, echo $(($(date +%s%N)/1000000)) is what you need.

Example:

$ echo $(($(date +%s%N)/1000000))1535546718115

date +%s returns the number of seconds since the epoch, if that's useful.


Nano is 10−9 and milli 10−3. Hence, we can use the three first characters of nanoseconds to get the milliseconds:

date +%s%3N

From man date:

%N nanoseconds (000000000..999999999)

%s seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC

Source: Server Fault's How do I get the current Unix time in milliseconds in Bash?.