How to use time in shell script?

Question

I have small shell script where I'm checking time I got same time whereas I'm using sleep for 10 sec.

#!/bin/bash

date=`date +%H:%m:%S`
echo $date
sleep 10
echo $date

output:

07:10:48

07:10:48

output should be like this

07:10:48

07:10:58

Answer 1

You are printing the same variable ( date )twice. Here is the fix:

#!/bin/bash

date=`date +%H:%m:%S`
echo $date
sleep 10
date=`date +%H:%m:%S`
echo $date

And you'll get what you expected!

Answer 2

DRY: use a function

mydate() { date +%T; }

mydate
sleep 10
mydate

Or, use it like a variable:

echo "current time is $(mydate)"

btw, %m is the month (10), %M is the minute.