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Using the LaTeX command \today, I can insert the current date. Is there any way to insert the current year with a simple command? All I want is the simple 4 digit year that shows up in \today.

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3 Answers 3

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\the\year{}

Here \year represents a number and \the lets you output it as a text.

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  • 3
    For the sake of completeness, is there a way to get just '10
    – Geoff
    Jul 6, 2010 at 12:50
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    @Geoff: Here is a stupid one :) \newcounter{fooyear} \setcounter{fooyear}{\the\year} \addtocounter{fooyear}{-2000} and then use it in the document with '\arabic{fooyear} But its usage is limited to this century :P
    – percusse
    Jun 2, 2011 at 19:00
  • is \year from the datetime package?
    – Trevor Boyd Smith
    Jul 27, 2012 at 17:59
  • how does \the display the numerical year as a string? (i didn't know latex had datatypes... i thought everything was strings)
    – Trevor Boyd Smith
    Jul 27, 2012 at 17:59
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    Leaving out curly braces can cause dropped spaces. You may prefer: \the\year{}
    – jtpereyda
    Mar 9, 2014 at 4:05
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For the sake of Geoff's question above, here is some short code to only get the year, without changing any of the build-in macros.

\documentclass{article}
\makeatletter
\def\Year#1{%
  \def\yy@##1##2##3##4;{##3##4}%
  \expandafter\yy@#1;
}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\Year{\the\year}
\end{document}
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    Note that this yields a 2 digit year as requested by @Geoff.
    – Peter Grill
    Jan 31, 2012 at 3:22
  • I found that \year=10\relax would work, too.
    – Skillmon
    Aug 21, 2017 at 19:06
  • you may want to put a % after the semicolon.
    – Bart Michels
    May 21, 2019 at 11:16
5 
\documentclass{article}

\def\Year{\expandafter\YEAR\the\year}
\def\YEAR#1#2#3#4{#3#4}

\begin{document}
\Year 
\end{document}
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    Of course this fails if one tries to set a letter sent by Charlemagne to the Pope or a letter sent by some future descendant that writes in year 20124. :)
    – egreg
    Jun 2, 2011 at 19:37
  • Note that this yields a 2 digit year as requested by @Geoff.
    – Peter Grill
    Jan 31, 2012 at 3:21
  • @egreg - did you know that Charlemagne could not write?
    – Michael Palmer
    Jan 25, 2019 at 18:13
  • 2
    @MichaelPalmer But he had scribes! :-)
    – egreg
    Jan 25, 2019 at 18:18

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