title: Convert CURRENT_DATE or UNIX_TIMESTAMP to string in Hive (YYYY-DD-MM format)
body: <p>I have a weird dataset that I need to access in hive. Using traditional date/time functions (such as dateadd, etc) have proven difficult/ineffective. </p>
  
  <p>There is a column in my dataset that is a string with the date in YYYY-MM-DD format.</p>
  
  <p>I am wondering if it's possible to get the current date in YYYY-MM-DD format, and somehow cast it as a string? </p>
  
  <p>I've done considerable amounts of research and have tried just about everything in the documentation (<a href="https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/LanguageManual+UDF#LanguageManualUDF-DateFunctions" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/Hive/LanguageManual+UDF#LanguageManualUDF-DateFunctions</a>)</p>
  
  <p>Any help here will be greatly appreciated, as I've been grinding away at this problem for a considerable amount of time :)</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>