How to convert timestamps to dates in Bash?

On systems with GNU Coreutils >= 5.3.0, e.g. Linux you can use:

date -d @1267619929

date -r <number>

works for me on Mac OS X.

This version is similar to chiborg's answer, but it eliminates the need for the external tty and cat. It uses date, but could just as easily use gawk. You can change the shebang and replace the double square brackets with single ones and this will also run in sh.

#!/bin/bash
LANG=C
if [[ -z "$1" ]]
then
    if [[ -p /dev/stdin ]]    # input from a pipe
    then
        read -r p
    else
        echo "No timestamp given." >&2
        exit
    fi
else
    p=$1
fi
date -d "@$p" +%c

You can use GNU date, for example,

$ sec=1267619929
$ date -d "UTC 1970-01-01 $sec secs"

or

$ date -ud @1267619929