Command line tool for completing and repeating dates within a compact, human-readable calendar/tickler file. Basically a big ball of "Do what I mean" for dates. Makes living in plain text that much easier.
Operates on STDIN and STDOUT. To output the nearest Wednesday:
$ echo "w description" | tickler-dates
15.09.16w description
Intended use is to pipe a line from a text editor through the utility and back into the active buffer, as with Vim's !! or Emacs' shell-command-on-region.
$ go get github.com/thanthese/tickler-dates
Imagine a file that looks like this:
15.09.01t be diplomatic
15.09.09w polish head
15.09.12s send key personnel on dangerous away mission
15.09.14m practice flute
Each line is an entry. The first half is the date in YY.MM.DDw format (where Monday through Sunday is m, t, w, r, f, s, u), and the rest is a description. This format allows the file to be sorted with sort -n.
Note: these examples assume that today is 15.09.10r.
A vanilla entry with a complete date (and optional description) is left alone.
15.09.15w these are both no-ops
15.09.15w
A bare description will prepend today:
nothing => 15.09.10r nothing
A partial date will be completed (leading whitespace shown for clarity only). Incorrect weekdays will be corrected.
09.12s no year => 15.09.12s no year
9.12s no leading zeros => 15.09.12s no leading zeros
12s no month => 15.09.12s no month
s no day => 15.09.12s no day
15.09.12 no weekday => 15.09.12s no weekday
09.12 => 15.09.12s
9.12 => 15.09.12s
12 => 15.09.12s
15.09.12w corrected to s => 15.09.12s corrected to s
You can specify an amount to add to the date in terms of days, weeks, months, or years. Defaults to 1 and d if pieces are left out.
15.09.12s+1 add day => 15.09.13u add day
15.09.12s+1d add day => 15.09.13u add day
15.09.12s+d add day => 15.09.13u add day
15.09.12s+ add day => 15.09.13u add day
15.09.12s+20y => 35.09.10m
The utility accepts a plus argument -p that behaves similarly. Use it to add a (possibly negative) number of days to the date.
$ echo "15.09.10 add 4 days" | tickler-dates -p 4
15.09.14m add 4 days
echo "15.09.10 subtract 4 days" | tickler-dates -p -4
15.09.06u subtract 4 days
You can define a repetition interval anywhere in the description, separated from the other text by whitespace (and optionally surrounded with ()s). > adds to the shown date. This is useful for, say, tracking a weekly appointment. Repetition intervals are only applied for "complete dates" -- that is, the year was specified, there was no add, and a plus argument was not used.
15.09.12s > plus one day => 15.09.13u > plus one day
15.09.12s plus >1 one day => 15.09.13u plus >1 one day
15.09.12s plus one >d day => 15.09.13u plus one >d day
15.09.12s plus one day >1d => 15.09.13u plus one day >1d
15.09.12s (>4w) plus 4 weeks => 15.10.10s (>4w) plus 4 weeks
15.09.12s (>1m) plus 1 month => 15.10.12m (>1m) plus 1 month
15.09.12s (>2y) plus 2 years => 17.09.12t (>2y) plus 2 years
+ works almost the same way, but it adds from today rather than whatever date is shown. As an example, let's say you'd like to get a haircut every 2 weeks. But if you don't get a haircut for 3 weeks, you don't want the next one in 1 week -- you still want it 2 weeks from now. + preserves the spacing between reminders.
11.02.01t +1w => 15.09.17r +1w
The by-week | operator handles those "2nd Sunday of the month" situations.
15.09.10r |m+1r 1st Thursday of next month
15.09.10r |m+2r 2nd Thursday of next month
15.09.10r |m-1r last Thursday of next month
15.09.10r |m-2r 2nd-to-last Thursday of next month
15.09.10r |y+1r 1st Thursday of this month next year
When you just want today's date, the -t option will spit it out today.
$ tickler-date -t
15.09.10r
Finally, you can operate on several lines at the same time.
These mappings live in my .vimrc. You may enjoy.
nnoremap <space>d !!tickler-dates<cr>
nnoremap <space>D !!tickler-dates -p<space>
inoremap <C-t> <c-r>=system("tickler-dates -t")<cr><space>Try the node branch! It's no longer maintained, but it does roughly (exactly) the same thing.
MIT