rickb777/timestamp

A simple utility to generate short strings that represent timestamps

Timestamp

Timestamp is a simple utility, similar to the Unix date command. Timestamp outputs the current time in a format suitable for using in URLs as a marker for a version. The purpose is to support far-future expiry of assets by giving each new version of an asset a distinct URL.

To this end, the output format can be to any integer base between 2 and 36. A useful choice is a base-36 number, because it is a simple way to contract the number of characters needed, and therefore keep the URL short.

The precision can be set anywhere between days and nanoseconds, with seconds being the default.

Examples

timestamp
timestamp -precision sec -base 10

both print the number of seconds since the Unix Epoch, which is the same result as given by

date '%+s'

A more compact timestamp will be produced by

timestamp -precision min -base 36

which specifies minutes precision and is ideal for asset tagging if the assets are released no more often than once per minute. You might even prefer once per hour or per day.

Instead of the 1st Jan 1970 Epoch, a different inception point can be specified, so

timestamp -zero 2014-01-01

will print in base-36 the number of minutes since 1st Jan 2014, this being a much smaller number at the time of writing.

A short-as-possible example might be

timestamp -zero 2014-12-01 -precision day -base 36

Instead of the current time being printed as a timestamp, it is also possible to specify the output value explicitly. This would use timestamp simply for number base conversion

timestamp -value 100 -base 36

prints the number 100 in base 36, i.e. "2s". This is appropriate if you generate your own sequence of version numbers instead of using the time and you want to benefit from base-36 URL contraction.