Today's date instead of YYYYMMDD

[Yves Davignon]

Good day,

I have a notepad++ file that I copy and paste from on a daily basis.

I have this line:
COPY TO .\lcpout\Removed-Mar2023\REMOVED-YYYYMMDD

I manually replace the YYYYMMDD with today’s date but is there a way to have the YYYYMMDD reflect today’s date instead of the place holder?

Tx for your help,

Yves

[Alan Kilborn]

@Yves-Davignon

[Yves Davignon]

Tx Alan,

That will indeed insert today’s date where the cursor is located.

What I am/was looking for is a Date variable that I could insert in my file and when the notpad++ file is open, that date is populated with today’s date. If it can be done of course.

Yves

[Alan Kilborn]

@Yves-Davignon

Ah. So you mean that at the time of file opening, you want to do a replace on YYYYMMDD with the current date. Gotcha.

That would be fairly easy to script if you are willing to use a scripting plugin? More detail on what would be required for that is HERE.

[Alan Kilborn]

Anyway, here’s a demo script that could accomplish the goal. I call it ReplaceYyyymmddOnFileOpen.py:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

# references:
#  https://community.notepad-plus-plus.org/topic/24257

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

from Npp import *
import time

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

class RYOFO(object):

    def __init__(self):
        notepad.callback(self.fileopened_callback, [NOTIFICATION.FILEOPENED])
        notepad.callback(self.bufferactivated_callback, [NOTIFICATION.BUFFERACTIVATED])
        self.process_next_buf_act = False

    def fileopened_callback(self, args):
        self.process_next_buf_act = True

    def bufferactivated_callback(self, args):
        if self.process_next_buf_act:
            editor.replace('YYYYMMDD', time.strftime('%Y%m%d', time.localtime()))
            self.process_next_buf_act = False

#-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

try:
    ryofo
except NameError:
    ryofo = RYOFO()