On the 'date' man and info pages,

SYNOPSIS
       date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
       date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]
Synopses:

     date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
     date [-u|--utc|--universal] [ MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss] ]

please break these down into:

printing the date:

     date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]

setting the date:

     date [-u|--utc|--universal] [ MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss] ]
     date [-s|--set] DATESTR

else the user in a panic to set the date, will try
# date -s 10140110
date: cannot set date: Invalid argument
Mon Jan 10 00:00:00 LMT 1014
Instead of
$ date    10140110

Only on
(info "(coreutils) Setting the time")
is the mystery revealed. P.S., on that page you should mention the
MMDDhhmm... string again, not just its components.



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