[PATCH] doc: commit: document special date keywords for --date
From: Md Ferdous Alam via GitGitGadget <hidden>
Date: 2026-02-23 08:45:05
Subsystem:
documentation, the rest · Maintainers:
Jonathan Corbet, Linus Torvalds
From: mdferdousalam <redacted>
The --date option in git-commit accepts human-readable keywords
like "now", "yesterday", "noon", "midnight", "tea", and "never",
but these were not documented. Add them to the "DATE FORMATS"
section of git-commit(1), and expand the --date option description
to point readers there.
Signed-off-by: mdferdousalam <redacted>
---
doc: commit: document special date keywords for --date
The --date option in git-commit accepts human-readable keywords like
"now", "yesterday", "noon", "midnight", "tea", and "never", but these
were not documented. Add them to the "DATE FORMATS" section of
git-commit(1), and expand the --date option description to point readers
there.
This addresses https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/issues/302
Signed-off-by: mdferdousalam mdferdousalam1989@yahoo.com
Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-2051%2Fmdferdousalam%2Fdoc-commit-date-special-strings-v1
Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-2051/mdferdousalam/doc-commit-date-special-strings-v1
Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/2051
Documentation/date-formats.adoc | 12 ++++++++++++
Documentation/git-commit.adoc | 5 ++++-
2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/date-formats.adoc b/Documentation/date-formats.adoc
index e24517c496..cbf651a8be 100644
--- a/Documentation/date-formats.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/date-formats.adoc@@ -28,4 +28,16 @@ ifdef::git-commit[] In addition to recognizing all date formats above, the `--date` option will also try to make sense of other, more human-centric date formats, such as relative dates like "yesterday" or "last Friday at noon". ++ +The following special keywords are also recognized: ++ +`now`;; the current date and time. +`yesterday`;; yesterday's date at the current time. +`noon`;; today (or the given date) at 12:00. +`midnight`;; today (or the given date) at 00:00. +`tea`;; today (or the given date) at 17:00. +`never`;; a zero timestamp (used e.g. by linkgit:git-reflog[1]). ++ +These keywords can be combined with other date constructs, for +example `yesterday noon` or `3.days.ago`. endif::git-commit[]
diff --git a/Documentation/git-commit.adoc b/Documentation/git-commit.adoc
index 8329c1034b..840bc52096 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-commit.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/git-commit.adoc@@ -181,7 +181,10 @@ See linkgit:git-rebase[1] for details. the commit author is then copied from the first such commit found. `--date=<date>`:: - Override the author date used in the commit. + Override the author date used in the commit. See the + "DATE FORMATS" section below for accepted formats, + including human-readable strings like `now`, `yesterday`, + and `noon`. `-m <msg>`:: `--message=<msg>`::
base-commit: 7c02d39fc2ed2702223c7674f73150d9a7e61ba4 -- gitgitgadget