Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!mailrus!uwmcsd1!bbn!gateway!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!eichin
From: eichin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU ("Mark W. Eichin")
Newsgroups: comp.emacs
Subject: [eichin@ATHENA.MIT.EDU: re: insert time/date and signature]
Message-ID: <8809082230.AA19980@KREMVAX.MIT.EDU>
Date: 8 Sep 88 22:30:15 GMT
Sender: news@bbn.COM
Organization: BBN news/mail gateway
Lines: 72

{I sent this only to fischer, but then saw the complicated answer and
figured I'd post...}

   Date: 8 Sep 88 16:07:06 GMT
   Sender: arpa-unix-emacs-request@bbn.com
   Reply-To: Scott Fischer <fischer%umn-cs.uucp@bbn.com>
   Organization: University of Minnesota, Dept. of CSci.

   Does anyone out there have a keybinding defintion that will insert
   the current time or date along with an identification string at the
   current point.  For example, I would like to type "M-x date" or define
   that to a keystroke and it would insert.
	   Thu Sep 8 10:59:40 CDT 1988  -- Scott W. Fischer

What emacs? I have code for GNUemacs, M-x stardate, which gives me a
very compact form: [eichin:19880908.1807EST] The code follows;
however, for what you want (in GNU) you could just do:

(defun date () 
  "Insert a date label into the current buffer"
  (interactive)
  (insert (current-time-string) " -- " (user-full-name)))

Thu Sep  8 18:24:17 1988 -- Mark W. Eichin

(the second line is what happens when you run M-x date.) Note that
this is *MUCH* faster than actually forking a date subprocess, even if
you add elisp code to format the date. (I did use that solution once,
but needed the speed and came up with this one...)
  I keep stardate bound to ^X^J, and use it to mark comments in code...

				Mark Eichin
			<eichin@athena.mit.edu>
		SIPB Member & Project Athena ``Watchmaker'' 


;;; stardate.el
;;; insert something like [eichin:19880309.0843EST] into a file, as a
;;; nerdly sort of timestamp.
;;;					[eichin:19880309.0843EST]
;;; There MUST be some way of speeding this up...
;;; sigh. there is. look at the rcslogs for the old icky version.
;;;					[eichin:19880309.0936EST]

(defvar stardate_el-RCS-id)
(setq stardate_el-RCS-id
      "$Header: stardate.el,v 1.2 88/03/09 09:44:01 eichin Exp $")

(defconst month-day-alist 
  '(("Jan"."01") ("Feb"."02") ("Mar"."03") ("Apr"."04") ("May"."05")
    ("Jun"."06") ("Jul"."07") ("Aug"."08") ("Sep"."09") ("Oct"."10")
    ("Nov"."11") ("Dec"."12"))
  "assoc list of months/numeric string numbers. See calendar.el.")

(defvar stardate-timezone "EST")

(setq date (current-time-string))
(defun insert-stardate ()
  "Put stardate at point."
  (interactive)
  (let ((date (current-time-string)))
    (insert "[" (getenv "USER") ":" 
	    (substring date -4 nil)	; yyyy
	    (cdr (assoc (substring date 4 7)
			month-day-alist)) ; MM
	    (let ((d (substring date 8 9)))
	      (if (equal d " ") "0" d))
	    (substring date 9 10)	; d
	    "."
	    (substring date 11 13)	; hh
	    (substring date 14 16)	; mm
	    stardate-timezone
	    "]")))