bash timestamp

[gusl]

Is there a way to make my shell show the date&time every time I get the prompt?

This would make it easy to measure how long things took, even before you suspect anything.

Comments

[dachte.livejournal.com]

If you're using bash, the following might be a start:

PS1="\D{%d-%m-%y--%H-%M-%S} $ "

[vi-z.livejournal.com]

http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/howtos/Bash-Prompt/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO-2.html

[dachte.livejournal.com]

Err.. I mean:
PS1="\D{%d-%m-%y--%H:%M:%S} $ "

But then, the dashes and colons are all replaceable with whatever you like.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

It works! Thank you! This is great.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

I kinda like: PS1="bash(\D{%d-%m-%y, %H:%M:%S}) $ "

resulting in: bash(06-09-07, 12:53:51) $

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Is there a way to make one's scripts hit "enter"? It would be good to do this as the first thing, in order to "start the clock".

I suppose I can always add a line like "echo", but that's not exactly the same thing.

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Are you aware of the "time" builtin command?

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

oh, of course.

OTOH, it's better to not have to add anything to your scripts.

[wjl.livejournal.com]

except for the "pressing enter" part? :)

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

well, that's rather easy to do outside of the script.

In any case, I'm worrying that "echo" will not give you a prompt inside of the script... You only get one when the script to actually finishes...

[wjl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, "echo" will not do what you want. But if there were something that did do what you want, it would be no easier to do outside of the script than running "time"... unless i'm missing something obvious.

[inferno0069.livejournal.com]

In zsh you can define a function preexec() that runs after you hit enter to run a command but before the command runs; it could print the time. Then you could either keep the time in your prompt or define precmd() to print it just before the prompt. I don't know which other shells have this, but I wouldn't be surprised if bash were among them.