sendmail, 4th Edition

$d

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The current date in Unix ctime (3) format

All versions

The $d macro holds the current date and time. $d is given its value at the same time $b is defined. The only difference between the two is that $b contains the date in RFC822 format, whereas $d contains the same date in Unix ctime (3) format.

The form of a date in ctime (3) format is generally : ^[16]

^[16] The format produced by ctime(3) varies depending on your location.

 Sun Dec 26 01:03:52 2003\n\ 

When sendmail stores this form of date into $d , it converts the trailing newline (the \n ) into a zero, thus stripping the newline from the date.