linux date command

I found date is rather a useful command to encode or decode timestamp from epoch or human readable date.

date [options]   [+format]
--date="TIME"  #use this to input a human readable date
# example: date --date="2014-03-12 15:13:10"
# Notice --date  option could also read seconds-from-epoch
# example: date --date="@1396572606"

--set="TIME"  #set linux date as specified TIME

+%s   #format as secnds from epoch

# example:
date --date="2013-06-01 12:00:05" +%s
# 1370059205

But actually, the -s option will not change linux time from CMOS level, linux time will follow what CMOS tick tock.

There is another command to modify linux time from CMOS level.
hwclock --set --date="2011-08-14 16:45:05"
It will surely set hardware clock as 2011-08-14 16:45:05