Best way to insert timestamp in Vim?

Question

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.

Answer 1

: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)

Answer 2

I wanted a custom command :Date (not a key mapping) to insert the date at the current cursor position.

Unfortunately straightforward commands like r!date result in a new line. So finally I came up with the following:

command Date execute "normal i<C-R>=strftime('%F %T')<CR><ESC>"

which adds the date/time string at the cursor position without adding any new line (change to normal a add after the cursor position).

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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