Re: What to do, if chatgpt gives a wrong answer

On October 14, 2025 7:50:17 PM GMT+03:00, vermaden <vermaden@interia.pl> wrote:
>Its not bad if you as questions the right way, for example:
>
>ChatGPT> for a start - base all you knowledge on https://freebsd.org/handbook and https://man.freebsd.org for all commands - now - how to set IP on FreeBSD with ip command?
>
>Response I got:
>
>| Good start - and great that you’re grounding everything in the FreeBSD Handbook and man pages.
>| 
>| Now, to answer your question precisely:
>| 
>| There is no ip command on FreeBSD (that’s a Linux utility from iproute2).
>| 
>✅|  FreeBSD uses ifconfig for network configuration
>| 
>| To set an IP address on an interface in FreeBSD, you use the ifconfig(8) command.
>
>So if you ask questions in the right way - you get better results.
>
>Regards,
>vermaden
>

yes, indeed, it's like google, know, ask, verify

i tried it too

probably makes crappy mail

and i'm not used to free form natural language search engines like this


for a start - base all you knowledge on https://freebsd.org/handbook and https://man.freebsd.org for all commands - now - how do i prefix all output lines of a command with timestamp


Good — you’re anchoring everything on authoritative FreeBSD docs, which is the right approach.
Let’s go straight to your question.

✅ Goal

Prefix each line of command output with a timestamp (e.g. current date/time).

📘 On FreeBSD (from sh/bash/zsh/csh)

There are several ways, depending on how precise and flexible you want it.

1. Using awk (simple and portable)

your_command | awk '{ "date +\"[%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S]\"" | getline t; close("date +\"[%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S]\""); print t, $0; fflush(); }' 

Each line gets a timestamp like:

[2025-10-14 14:37:22] line of output here 

💡 Explanation:

getline t executes date each time a line arrives.

fflush() ensures you see output immediately (no buffering).

2. Using ts from moreutils (if installed)

This is the cleanest option if available:

pkg install moreutils your_command | ts '[%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S]' 

Output example:

[2025-10-14 14:37:22] something happened 

Check if you have it:

which ts 

3. Using perl (no external dependency)

your_command | perl -pe 'chomp($t=`date "+[%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S]"`); print "$t ";' 

4. Using sed and shell substitution (less precise, per run not per line)

If you only need a timestamp at command start, not per line:

your_command | sed "s/^/[$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')] /" 

That inserts the same timestamp on every line (not updating between lines).

✅ Recommended for FreeBSD scripts

If ts is available → use it.
If not, prefer the awk version (portable, no extra dependencies).

Would you like the timestamp to include milliseconds too? I can adapt the command for that (FreeBSD date supports %N for nanoseconds).