Every now and then I come across a unix timestamp that I’m interested in quickly estimating what date value it is.

After writing numerous throwaway scripts to do this, I decided to find a way to write a bash function so I can do this anytime I come across a timestamp again.

On Linux (and possibly other UNIX OSes) simply run this or put it in your .bashrc or .bash_profile

function epoch() { date -d @$1 }

On OSX the date utility works a bit different:

function epoch() { date -jf '%s' $1 }

Now whenever you want to convert a timestamp into a date value simply type epoch followed by the timestamp value and hit the return/enter key.

On 32-bit systems, you will get bit by the Year 2038 problem so beware of that.