Add date and time to stdout.
Ever wanted to add timestamps to the output of another command?
Then ts is your friend.
It simply prepends every line it receives from stdin with the current time and date.
And yes, you could just run something like
alias ts='xargs -Iln bash -c "echo \$(date) ln"',
but this is faster and easier to use. Plus it's written in Go
so it's way better.
Make sure Go 1.1 is installed and $GOPATH is set.
Then run:
go get github.com/calebbrown/ts
$ long_running_cmd | ts
[2013-07-04 16:06:57] some output
[2013-07-04 16:08:30] some more output
...
Using the -f argument:
$ long_running_cmd | ts -f="Jan 02, 2006 3:04pm"
[Jul 04, 2013 4:06pm] some output
[Jul 04, 2013 4:08pm] some more output
...
Using the TS_TIME_FORMAT environment variable:
$ export TS_TIME_FORMAT="Jan 02, 2006 3:04pm"
$ long_running_cmd | ts
[Jul 04, 2013 4:06pm] some output
[Jul 04, 2013 4:08pm] some more output
...
For more information about what custom time formats look like the Go's time package docs have some notes.