I need something simple like date, but in seconds since 1970 instead of the current date, hours, minutes, and seconds.
date doesn't seem to offer that option. Is there an easy way?
Just to add.
Get the seconds since epoch(Jan 1 1970) for any given date(e.g Oct 21 1973).
date -d "Oct 21 1973" +%s
Convert the number of seconds back to date
date --date @120024000
The command date is pretty versatile. Another cool thing you can do with date(shamelessly copied from date --help).
Show the local time for 9AM next Friday on the west coast of the US
date --date='TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 09:00 next Fri'
Better yet, take some time to read the man page http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/date.1.html