Is there a way to insert a timestamp in a file in Ubuntu?

Question

I often find myself needing to type out a timestamp into a text file. Is there a way to quickly insert the current timestamp into a file in Ubuntu?

Answer 1

You can use the date command.

date >> my_file.txt

Where my_file.txt is the file to put the timestamp into.

Look at the manual page for strftime(3) (man 3 strftime) to see some date formatters you can use. For instance:

date +%l:%M >> my_file.txt

Will output something like 9:37 (Hour:Minute) to the text file.

Answer 2

Use this command at your shell prompt (or within your shell script):

• date >> /var/log/my_log_file.log

Answer 3

Install xclip:

sudo apt-get install xclip

And run the following in a command prompt:

date +"%Y-%M-%d %H:%M" | while read line; do echo -n "$line"; done | xclip -i -selection clipboard

Then you can paste the datetime stamp via ctrl+v into whatever program you choose. You can put the command in a shell script and run it from a keyboard shortcut for convenience.