51–60 of 104 posts
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https://crates.io/search?q=bttf // backronym bttf stands for biff time to format
You win the naming contest. The project has been renamed: https://github.com/BurntSushi/bttf/pull/14
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.
Yes!!! To spell it out (with the new biff -> bttf name): $ 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…
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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
As the author of a different project also named Biff, I do have to warn you that half the comments on your HN posts will be people quoting back to the future--though I haven't decided yet if that's annoying or an engagement hack! [1] https://github.com/jacobobryant/biff
I still want one of those hover boards!
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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…
I came here to complain about this. Please read `LANG` like everything else :)
To be clear, I don't mean publishing a crate to read an environment variable. Of course. I mean a crate that converts a POSIX locale into a Unicode locale.
I guess there's probably a 20% solution that gets 80% of the way there. e.g.,
$ BTTF_LOCALE="$(echo $LANG | sed 's/_/-/' | sed 's/\..*//')" bttf
Thu, May 28, 2026, 11:46:21 AM EDT
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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
> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. collisions, lol % apt-cache search biff biff - a mail notification tool gnubiff - mail notification program for GNOME (and others) wmbiff - Dockable app that displays information about mailboxes xlbiff - mail notification pop-up with configurable message scans (along with 9 more matches without biff in command name)
1. Not precise name collisions.
2. All mail-notification utilities, as was the original biff.
And since we're mentioning Debian, it has a policy requiring unique names within the Debian archive to be unique. Precedence goes to the earlier software packaged. Installed programs must also have unique names within a given system. The datetime Swiss army knife utility discussed here violates both policies.
As Debian policy is used both for Debian and derived distros (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions#De...> for a partial listing), it has considerable influence.
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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
> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. The name Biff was just too good to pass up. So if I do an "apt install biff" on Debian (or Ubuntu) what will happen? * https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=biff If I type in "biff" on a Debian CLI, what should I expect the behaviour of the program that is executed to be? Will it be something about mail or time?
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-binary.html#the-...>
https://packages.debian.org/trixie/biff>
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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
It was a great opportunity to name a unix tool "mcfly" or just "Marty" for time manipulation. Better luck next time, I guess.
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> Yeah the name collision is unfortunate, but probably fine. collisions, lol % apt-cache search biff biff - a mail notification tool gnubiff - mail notification program for GNOME (and others) wmbiff - Dockable app that displays information about mailboxes xlbiff - mail notification pop-up with configurable message scans (along with 9 more matches without biff in command name)
Those are: 1. Not precise name collisions. 2. All mail-notification utilities, as was the original biff. And since we're mentioning Debian, it has a policy requiring unique names within the Debian archive to be unique. Precedence goes to the earlier software packaged. Installed programs must also have unique names within a given system. The datetime Swiss army knife utility discussed here violates both policies. As D…
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Those are: 1. Not precise name collisions. 2. All mail-notification utilities, as was the original biff. And since we're mentioning Debian, it has a policy requiring unique names within the Debian archive to be unique. Precedence goes to the earlier software packaged. Installed programs must also have unique names within a given system. The datetime Swiss army knife utility discussed here violates both policies. As D…
I've renamed the project to bttf :-)
https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=bttf>
Might want to ping the mods (hn@ycombinator.com) to update this submission title.
Edit: I'd typoed "bttf" as "btff" initially. Corrected shows partial but not exact matches on "libttfautohint1" and variants.
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It was a great opportunity to name a unix tool "mcfly" or just "Marty" for time manipulation. Better luck next time, I guess.
That's... not terrible. Biff isn't exactly popular (yet?), so a name change isn't out of the question. Both of those names (and `biff`) are already taken on crates.io. Which is maybe not a huge problem. IDK. Naming is hard.