Bttf is a command line datetime Swiss army knife

Post by aftbit » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:37 PM UTC

burntsushi wrote: post #15

elcaro wrote: post #3

% biff 2026 M05 28, Thu 17:27:46 Ahh, the month of M05

This is a fair critique actually. And this shouldn't be the default. It is for now because I haven't gotten around to making Biff read your POSIX locale settings and converting them to a Unicode locale. If you build with `cargo build --release --features locale` (or get Biff from a release binary), then you can do: $ BIFF_LOCALE=en-US biff Thu, May 28, 2026, 6:38:09 AM EDT If that doesn't work, then you can enable lo…

Post by jacobobryant » Thu, May 28, 2026, 2:48 PM UTC

burntsushi wrote: post #19

yzydserd wrote: post #2

No, Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.

Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses. "Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU [1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff

Post by fnordpiglet » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:11 PM UTC

burntsushi wrote: post #19

yzydserd wrote: post #2

No, Biff informs the system whether you want to be notified when mail arrives during the current terminal session.

Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. The name comes from the fact that Biff is a character in Back to the Future, and it rhymes with Jiff[1]. Jiff is the datetime library that Biff uses. "Make like a tree and get out of here!" https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Jabplo2pZU [1]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/jiff

Post by burntsushi » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:15 PM UTC

onceonceonce wrote: post #42

been hand-rolling date -d plus a wrapper script for newsletter scheduling for years. Stuff like "next second Tuesday after a holiday" and "convert these timestamps to a reader's local time before send". biff time seq monthly -w 2-tue would have replaced about 40 lines of bash for me.

    $ bttf time seq monthly -w 2-tue -u 1y | bttf time fmt -f '%c'
    Tue, Jun 9, 2026, 11:15:11 AM EDT
    Tue, Jul 14, 2026, 11:15:11 AM EDT
    Tue, Aug 11, 2026, 11:15:11 AM EDT
    Tue, Sep 8, 2026, 11:15:11 AM EDT
    Tue, Oct 13, 2026, 11:15:11 AM EDT
    Tue, Nov 10, 2026, 11:15:11 AM EST
    Tue, Dec 8, 2026, 11:15:11 AM EST
    Tue, Jan 12, 2027, 11:15:11 AM EST
    Tue, Feb 9, 2027, 11:15:11 AM EST
    Tue, Mar 9, 2027, 11:15:11 AM EST
    Tue, Apr 13, 2027, 11:15:11 AM EDT
    Tue, May 11, 2027, 11:15:11 AM EDT

Post by burntsushi » Thu, May 28, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

dcminter wrote: post #34

throw0101a wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I.e., NAME biff -- be notified if mail arrives and who it is from […] HISTORY The biff command appeared in 4.0BSD. It was named after the dog of Heidi Stettner. He died in August 1993, at 15. * https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=biff Eric Cooper, a student contemporary to Foderero and Stettner, reports that the dog would bark at the mail carrier,[4][5] making it a natural choice for the name of a mail notifica…

From the excellent "A Quarter Century of UNIX" (by the late Peter H. Salus): Heidi would bring her dog with her to class and to her office. He was a very friendly dog, and a lot of the students enjoyed throwing a ball for him down the corridor to fetch. He even had his picture on the bulletin board with the graduate students: the legend read that he was working on his Ph.Dog. John decided to name the program after th…