How can I create a custom date in "snippets" in the Geany text editor?

Question

I often use the Geany text editor to write programming code. I recently knew that we can insert a code snippet in Geany automatically using some keybindings and I liked the idea of that.

So, I went through some of the basics of the snippets in the Geany manual.

And I tried to do this: A required snippet for an Octave script is:

#!/usr/bin/octave -qf
% Author   : Bhishan Poudel
% Date     :

I_like_this_to_be_inserted_automatically

My attempt so far:

We have to edit the configuration file called "snippets.conf" which can be accessed like this:

Menu Tools → Configuration Files → snippets.conf

Or ~/.config/geany/snippets.conf.

Then, I first checked the file type for Octave scripts:

geany --ft-names

I see the filetype is [Matlab/Octave]. So, I added the following code there.

[Matlab/Octave]
pre=#!/usr/bin/octave -qf \n% Author    : Bhishan Poudel \n% Date      : {date}\n\n

Note: to find the shebang path for octave installation directory, type which octave

Then to implement the code I created a file called a.m and opened it in Geany. Then the command to try this snippet is *preTab (type pre followed by Tab) then the output is:

#!/usr/bin/octave -qf
% Author    : Bhishan Poudel
% Date      : 2016-05-23

How can we change the date format to May 23, 2016?

Some useful links are following:
http://www.geany.org/manual/0.18.1/index.html#user-definable-snippets

I don't think this is really relevant to Octave nor MATLAB

sco1
– sco1

2016-05-23 19:28:25 +00:00
Commented May 23, 2016 at 19:28 — sco1
– sco1, Commented May 23, 2016 at 19:28

Peter Mortensen · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-30 00:39:19Z

1

One way to do it is to use {command: date} with date's default command line syntax. So in your case I think it would be

{command:date +"%b %d, %Y"}

Which results here into:

$ LANG=C date +"%b %d, %Y"
May 24, 2016

Another more general way would be to set up a template for your Octave scripts. Inside your template you should be able to insert values based on Geany's configuration. Have a look into the manual, but something like this saved as a template could work (untested):

#!/usr/bin/octave -qf
% Author    : {developer} <{mail}>
% Date      : {date}

But you would need to configure date-format in Geany's preferences — where you can use the options from above.

edited Mar 30, 2020 at 0:39

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 24, 2016 at 7:20

frlan

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6 Comments

BhishanPoudel Over a year ago

What is the line break symbol in geany configuration? To make a template I have make very long line, is there way I can do line break?

frlan Over a year ago

Not sure where you want to add it, but try \n

BhishanPoudel Over a year ago

Also what is %b symbol, is this same as %m?

BhishanPoudel Over a year ago

Here, new line is \n. I am talking about line break symbol \ (such as in C or Python), ... (in matlab/octave).

frlan Over a year ago

Inside a template you can use normal line breaks. Snippets doesn't support line breaks.

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