How to insert the date into vim

In vim you can execute comands with "!". You can combine that with "r" to insert the output into your current buffer.

:r!date
Fri Jul 20 09:39:26 SAST 2012

will insert the date into a file.

Now when I try to do some more interesting stuff like date with different format +%F. On the command line

$ date +%F
2012-07-20

In vim

:r!date "+%F"
message.to.followup.lstF

Which out puts the name of the file and puts F after it. some how the r!date "+%F" is being expanded in vim and not run on the command line. What do I need to do to run that so it puts the contents in vim.

Maybe vim has a better way to insert dates into files.

Vim has an internal strftime() function. Try this (in insert mode):

<C-r>=strftime('%F')<CR>

I kept experimenting till I figured out that vim was expanding the "%" character. So just escape "\%" and every thing works as I expected.

:r!date "+\%F"
2012-07-20

Now I can put dates into files Like I would like to

:r!date "+\%F" -d "-2 day"
2012-07-18

Another method, without escaping, using system():

system('date +%F')

In INSERT mode:

<C-r>=system('date +%F')<CR>

In NORMAL mode:

:put=system('date +%F')<CR>