Unix time

Unix time (also known as POSIX time or Epoch time) is a system for describing instants in time, defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Thursday, 1 January 1970,[1][note 1] not counting leap seconds.[1][2][note 2] It is used widely in Unix-like and many other operating systems and file formats. Because it does not handle leap seconds, it is neither a linear representation of time nor a true representation of UTC.[note 3] Unix time may be checked on most Unix systems by typing date +%s on the command line.