ascii-time(3)

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NAME

ascii-time - Return the current time as a string

SYNOPSIS

ascii-time [ "format" ]

DESCRIPTION

ascii-time returns the current time as a formatted string in #p9 which is equivalent to #l9 for the calling macro. The format of the resultant string is determined by the variable the parameter format, if given, otherwise by the variable %ascii-time. The format is defined using the following escape characters:

%%  - % char
%a  - Replaced by abbreviated week day name (3 letters)
%A  - Replaced by full week day name
%b  - Replaced by abbreviated month name (3 letters)
%B  - Replaced by full month name
%d  - Replaced by two digit day of month (01 to 31)
%e  - As with %d except a leading 0 is replaced by a space ( 1 to 31)
%H  - Replaced by two digit hour of the day (00 to 23)
%i  - Replaced by day of month (1 to 31)
%k  - Replaced by hour of the day (0 to 23)
%J  - Replaced by day of year (0 to 365)
%j  - Replaced by three digit day of year (000 to 365)
%M  - Replaced by two digit minute of the hour (00 to 59)
%m  - Replaced by two digit month (01 to 12)
%N  - Replaced by minute of the hour (0 to 59)
%o  - Replaced by month number (1 to 12)
%S  - Replaced by two digit second of the minute (00 to 59)
%v  - Replaced by second of the minute (0 to 59)
%w  - Replaced by day of the week (0 to 6 Sunday=0)
%y  - Replaced by the last two digits of the year (00 to 99)
%Y  - Replaced by the year as a decimal number (e.g. 2024)
%*  - All other characters are printed literally.

The default value of %ascii-time when not defined is:

"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"

To change the default date layout then %ascii-time should be defined in user.emf. i.e.

set-variable %ascii-time "%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y"

EXAMPLE

The following is taken from etfinsrt.emf, it uses ascii-time in replacing " $ASCII_TIME$ " with the current.

0 define-macro insert-template 
    . 
    . 
    ; Change the create date $ASCII_TIME$. 
    beginning-of-buffer 
    ; Get ASCII time in #l9 
    ascii-time 
    !force replace-string "\\$ASCII_TIME\\$" #l9 
    . 
    . 
!emacro

NOTES

ascii-time is a macro defined in utils.emf.

The default format was changed in 2025 to be ISO 8601 compliant. Some of the escape characters, such as %#d, were also changed to be more compliant with $mode-line(5) and C's strftime(3) function.