Best way to insert timestamp in Vim?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/56052
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EditPad Lite has a nice feature (CTRL-E, CTRL-I) which inserts a time stamp e.g. "2008-09-11 10:34:53" into your code.
What is the best way to get this functionality in Vim?
(I am using Vim 6.1 on a Linux server via SSH. In the current situation a number of us share a login so I don't want to create abbreviations in the home directory if there is another built-in way to get a timestamp.)
Solution
http://kenno.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/vim-tip-insert-time-stamp/
Tried it out, it works on my mac:
:r! date
produces:
Thu Sep 11 10:47:30 CEST 2008
This:
:r! date "+\%Y-\%m-\%d \%H:\%M:\%S"
produces:
2008-09-11 10:50:56
OTHER TIPS
To make it work cross-platform, just put the following in your vimrc:
nmap <F3> i<C-R>=strftime("%Y-%m-%d %a %I:%M %p")<CR><Esc>
imap <F3> <C-R>=strftime("%Y-%m-%d %a %I:%M %p")<CR>
Now you can just press F3 any time inside Vi/Vim and you'll get a timestamp like 2016-01-25 Mo 12:44 inserted at the cursor.
For a complete description of the available parameters check the documentation of the C function strftime().
Why is everybody using :r!? Find a blank line and type !!date from command-mode. Save a keystroke!
[n.b. This will pipe the current line into stdin, and then replace the line with the command output; hence the "find a blank line" part.]
As an extension to @Swaroop C H's answer,
^R=strftime("%FT%T%z")
is a more compact form that will also print the time zone (actually the difference from UTC, in an ISO-8601-compliant form).
If you prefer to use an external tool for some reason,
:r !date --rfc-3339=s
will give you a full RFC-3339 compliant timestamp; use ns instead of s for Spock-like precision, and pipe through tr ' ' T to use a capital T instead of a space between date and time.
Also you might find it useful to know that
:source somefile.vim
will read in commands from somefile.vim: this way you could set up a custom set of mappings, etc., and then load it when you're using vim on that account.
:r! date
You can then add format to the date command (man date) if you want the exact same format and add this as a vim alias as well
:r! date +"\%Y-\%m-\%d \%H:\%M:\%S"
That produces the format you showed in your example (date in the shell does not use \%, but just %, vim replaces % by the name of the current file, so you need to escape it).
You can add a map in your .vimrc for it to put the command automatically, for instance, each time you press F3:
:map <F3> :r! date +"\%Y-\%m-\%d \%H:\%M:\%S"<cr>
(Edited the from above :) ) (Edit: change text part to code, so that
<F3>
can be displayed)
Have a look to the tip dedicated to time stamp insertion/update on vim.wikia.
For a unix timestamp:
:r! date +\%s
You can also map this command to a key (for example F12) in VIM if you use it a lot:
Put this in your .vimrc:
map <F12> :r! date +\%s<cr>
From the Vim Wikia.
I use this instead of having to move my hand to hit an F key:
:iab <expr> tds strftime("%F %b %T")
Now in Insert mode it just type tds and as soon as I hit the space bar or return, I get the date and keep typing.
I put the %b in there, because I like seeing the month name. The %F gives me something to sort by date. I might change that to %Y%m%d so there are no characters between the units.
Another quick way not included by previous answers: type-
!!date
