suggested addition to 'date'

[Julian Elischer]

Sam Leffler wrote:

>Sam Leffler wrote:
>  
>
>>Julian Elischer wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>At various times I've wanted to add timestamps to logfiles as they are
>>>generated..
>>>
>>>usually this has involved perl or something to do it.
>>>
>>>finally I broke down and just added  a small bit to date(1)
>>>
>>>the -s option tells date to add a timestamp on the front of every line
>>>read in through stdin
>>>and put it out through stdout.   teh format of the datestamp is governed
>>>exactly as usual so:
>>>
>>>%ls | ./date -s +"%+: "
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: CVS
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: Makefile
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: date
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: date.1
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: date.1.gz
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: date.c
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: date.o
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: extern.h
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: netdate.c
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: netdate.o
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: vary.c
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: vary.h
>>>Fri Aug 11 19:53:34 PDT 2006: vary.o
>>>%ls | ./date -s +"%s: "
>>>1155351474: CVS
>>>1155351474: Makefile
>>>1155351474: date
>>>1155351474: date.1
>>>1155351474: date.1.gz
>>>1155351474: date.c
>>>1155351474: date.o
>>>1155351474: extern.h
>>>1155351474: netdate.c
>>>1155351474: netdate.o
>>>1155351474: vary.c
>>>1155351474: vary.h
>>>1155351474: vary.o
>>>%
>>>I attach the diff.
>>>I'm sure that someone who is a more competent practicioner of userland C
>>>programming
>>>can probably clean this up abit.
>>>
>>>do people think this is a worthwhile addition?
>>>
>>>An easy to imagine use for this is to add it in the makefile for /usr so
>>>that "make buildworld" datestamped its output
>>>(for example).
>>>
>>>it makes it easy to timestamp output from a console logger for example:
>>>      
>>>
>>pbj% ls | sed -e "s/^/`date +'%+: '`/"
>>Fri Aug 11 20:18:05 PDT 2006: Desktop
>>Fri Aug 11 20:18:05 PDT 2006: Desktop DB
>>Fri Aug 11 20:18:05 PDT 2006: Desktop DF
>>Fri Aug 11 20:18:05 PDT 2006: Documents
>>Fri Aug 11 20:18:05 PDT 2006: Library
>>Fri Aug 11 20:18:05 PDT 2006: Movies
>>	...
>>    
>>
>
>I figure you won't like that 'cuz it pastes the same date stamp on every
>line so here's another offering:
>
>pbj% ls | awk '{ "date +'%+'" | getline x; print x ": " $0; }'
>Fri Aug 11 20:50:42 PDT 2006: Desktop
>Fri Aug 11 20:50:42 PDT 2006: Desktop DB
>Fri Aug 11 20:50:42 PDT 2006: Desktop DF
>Fri Aug 11 20:50:42 PDT 2006: Documents
>Fri Aug 11 20:50:42 PDT 2006: Library
>Fri Aug 11 20:50:42 PDT 2006: Movies
>  
>
It still does a fork followed by an exec of shell followed by an exec of 
date once for every line.
Do you think it is a BAD thng to add or are you just pointing out that 
it is possinle to do it in other ways?