I got this brilliant idea. Let's say one likes the output of $ date --iso-8601=seconds 2020-11-30T21:15:47+08:00
but wants to know "how you did it?" Hmmm, no assistance from $ date --iso-8601=seconds --debug 2020-11-30T21:15:50+08:00 Ah, if only there were a: $ date --iso-8601=seconds --expose-flags date +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z Then one needn't use trial and error to figure out the template being used behind the scenes! date (GNU coreutils) 8.32