Inserting a future time

Question

I would like to create a simple pomodoro timer I can insert into text files. Something like:

Current Time - 10:15

End Time - 10:40

However I have not been able to find a good way to insert a future time.

I have used :put =strftime('%T') to create the current time and this works perfectly, however I am not sure how to "add" to this time to create a t + 25m time.

Answer 1

You can get the current time with localtime():

:echo localtime()
1611790246

And you can format this with strftime() by passing it as the second argument:

:echo strftime('%T', localtime())
07:32:16

And you can modify it as well:

:echo strftime('%T', localtime() + 60 * 25)
07:57:16

So for your command it'll be something like:

:put =strftime('%T', localtime() + 60 * 25)

In reality, you probably want to save the localtime() and then insert strftime('%T', time) and strftime('%T', time + 60 * 25), because otherwise you might risk the time between the two operations being just long enough for it to be off by one second/minute. You can also round it to 25-minute intervals with some more math.

See :help localtime() and :help strftime() for more information on all of the above. :help function-list is also very useful, which includes a "date and time" section. Also see How do I navigate to topics in Vim's documentation?

Answer 2

If you don't mind using a system based solution, then on ubuntu (and many linuxes)

date --date="5 mins"

returns the current time + 5 minutes. You can also ask for hours, days, even "next monday" will give you the date of the next monday. To load these values into a vim buffer use the 'read from command' command:

:r! date
:r! date --date="5 mins"