Converting date time String to only date format in Bash

Suppose you have a string like 2012-01-06 14:38:36 and you want to get only the date part of it... then try the following simply date command


VAR="2012-01-06 14:38:36" 
VAR=`date +%Y-%m-%d -d "$VAR"`
echo $VAR


This will convert the string to only date and output: 


2012-01-06