⏳ quicktime

Not the video player. This is a simple shell script for quickly generating datetime ranges in ISO 8601 format. It works in both BSD-derived shell environments (macOS) and Linux.

Overview

Quicktime generates start and end timestamps for various time intervals:

• The last hour
• The last day (24 hours)
• The last week (7 days)
• The last month (30 days)

It can also generate timestamps for calendar-based intervals:

• The previous hour (e.g., 10:00:00 to 10:59:59)
• The previous calendar day (yesterday, from 00:00:00 to 23:59:59)
• The previous calendar week (previous Monday through Sunday)
• The previous calendar month (e.g., February 1st 00:00:00 to February 28th 23:59:59)

Installation

1. Download the script:

   curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sbarbett/quicktime/main/quicktime.sh

2. Make it executable:

   chmod +x quicktime.sh

3. Optionally, symbolically link it to your PATH:

   ln -s "$(pwd)/quicktime.sh" /usr/local/bin/quicktime

Usage

quicktime [hour|day|week|month] [--calendar] [--format FORMAT] [--utc]

Arguments

• hour|day|week|month: Required. Specifies the time interval to generate.
• --calendar: Optional. Use calendar-based intervals instead of relative time.
• --format FORMAT: Optional. Specify a custom output format (default: "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss").
• --utc: Optional. Use UTC time instead of local time.

Format Specifiers

• yyyy: 4-digit year
• MM: 2-digit month (01-12)
• dd: 2-digit day (01-31)
• hh or HH: 2-digit hour (00-23)
• mm: 2-digit minute (00-59)
• ss: 2-digit second (00-59)
• SSS: 3-digit millisecond (000-999)

Examples

Relative Time Intervals

# Last hour
$ quicktime hour
{
  "start": "2025-03-12 13:01:41",
  "end": "2025-03-12 14:01:41"
}

# Last day (24 hours)
$ quicktime day
{
  "start": "2025-03-11 14:01:41",
  "end": "2025-03-12 14:01:41"
}

# Last week (7 days)
$ quicktime week
{
  "start": "2025-03-05 14:01:41",
  "end": "2025-03-12 14:01:41"
}

# Last month (30 days)
$ quicktime month
{
  "start": "2025-02-10 14:01:41",
  "end": "2025-03-12 14:01:41"
}

Calendar-Based Intervals

# Previous hour
$ quicktime hour --calendar
{
  "start": "2025-03-12 13:00:00",
  "end": "2025-03-12 13:59:59"
}

# Previous day (yesterday)
$ quicktime day --calendar
{
  "start": "2025-03-11 00:00:00",
  "end": "2025-03-11 23:59:59"
}

# Previous calendar week (Monday-Sunday)
$ quicktime week --calendar
{
  "start": "2025-03-03 00:00:00",
  "end": "2025-03-09 23:59:59"
}

# Previous calendar month
$ quicktime month --calendar
{
  "start": "2025-02-01 00:00:00",
  "end": "2025-02-28 23:59:59"
}

Custom Format

# Date only format
$ quicktime day --format "yyyy-MM-dd"
{
  "start": "2025-03-11",
  "end": "2025-03-12"
}

# With milliseconds
$ quicktime hour --calendar --format "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS"
{
  "start": "2025-03-12 13:00:00.000",
  "end": "2025-03-12 13:59:59.999"
}

UTC Time

$ quicktime day --utc
{
  "start": "2025-03-11 14:01:41",
  "end": "2025-03-12 14:01:41"
}

License

MIT