Date: Can it be specific to a shell??

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <72074 at yale-celray.yale.UUCP> zador-anthony at CS.YALE.EDU (anthony zador) writes:
> How does the UNIX date command know the date?

It's maintained by the kernel and accessed via the time() system call.

>Is there some file that is updated?

No.

>Must date be the same to all shells on a given machine, 

You can generally use the TZ environment variable to set the time zone
that is applied when interpreting the kernel's time (which is maintained
as UT, not local time).

>If a machine A is the disk server for B, what determines
>the date-stamp for a file, A or B?

The kernel that owns the disk inode controls the time stamp.