I often need timestamp on the commandline or in scripts to save files with the exact time.
In the shell you can easy get a unix timestamp when you enter the following command:
date +%s
You can now simple save a mysqldump from with the exact time in the filename.
mysqldump DATABSE > DATABASE-`date +%s`.sql
Also you are able to create a bash/zsh alias for the timestamp. Just put the follwing line in your shell configuration:
alias timestamp = date +%s
Good Night, Daniel