Allow printing the date in compact ISO 8601 format. E.g.: date : Wed Nov 11 14:55:04 MST 2009 date -i : 20091111T145504 The 8601 format allows rc scripts to create compact timestamps for log entries, is easier to manipulate with sed/grep/etc., and is a natural key for sort(1). ('date -n' is compact and sortable, but isn't human readable or regexp friendly.)