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Future Dates

I take a lot of notes in plain text and often want to add a due date to current tasks, but I’m usually too lazy to open up a calendar. These scripts (saved as applications and launched via Alfred) will quickly copy tomorrows date, or some date x days in the future.

Tomorrows Date simply copies tomorrows date to the clipboard.

set morrow to current date  
set morrow to morrow + days  
set the clipboard to (do shell script "echo " & morrow & " | sed s/,[^,]*$//")

If the script is run today (Thursday, March 20, 2014), Friday, March 21 will be copied to the clipboard.

Future Date will fetch the date of any day in the future based on how many days it is from today (via dialog box).

set dayss to text returned of (display dialog "How many days from now?" default answer "" buttons {"OK"} default button "OK")  
set morrow to current date  
set morrow to morrow + dayss * days  
set the clipboard to (do shell script "echo " & morrow & " | sed s/,[^,]*$//")

If the project or task is due 4 days from today (Thursday, March 20, 2014), enter 4 in the dialog box when your run the script. Monday, March 24 will be copied to the clipboard.

The sed command at the end of each script trims the date from Thursday, March 20, 2014 12:00:00 PM to a much more friendly Thursday, March 20. You can adjust the sed command to trim the text wherever you like. For example: if you wanted to remove everything after 2014 instead of after March 20, the sed script would read sed s/[^2014]*$//.

Applescript allows for the adjustment of hours as well as days. You could alter the script to read something like:

set dued to text returned of (display dialog "How many days and hours from now?" default answer "" buttons {"OK"} default button "OK")  
set dued to words of dued  
set dayss to item 1 of dued  
set hourss to item 2 of dued  
set morrow to current date  
set morrow to morrow + dayss * days  
set morrow to morrow + hourss * hours  
set morrow to morrow as text  
set the clipboard to morrow

Example: if it is currently noon on Thursday and you have a project due Monday at 4 pm (4 days and 4 hours from now) run the script, and when the dialog box appears, type 4 followed by a space and then 4. The first 4 indicates the number of days from today, and the second 4 indicates the number of hours from the current time. Finally, hit enter or press OK. The script will copy Monday, March 24, 2014 4:00:00 PM to the clipboard.

There are a few ways to edit the date and time string using sed. Replace the line set the clipboard to morrow with one of the options below.

If you want to remove the seconds from the time, add set the clipboard to (do shell script "echo " & morrow & " | sed s/:[^..][0-9]//2") to the end of the script. This will give you “Monday, March 24, 2014 4:00 PM”
And if you just wanted the hour without minutes or seconds, add set the clipboard to (do shell script "echo " & morrow & " | sed s/:[^..][0-9]//g") to the end of the script. This will give you “Monday, March 24, 2014 4 PM”
Finally, (because I’m on a roll) if you wanted to remove the year, minutes and seconds, add set the clipboard to (do shell script "echo " & morrow & " | sed s/:[^..][0-9]//g | sed s/20..// | sed s/' '//3") to the end of the script. This will give you “Monday, March 24, 4 PM”

I am not familiar enough with sed/regex to write a more elegant solution for the last scenario, but it works well enough so I’m satisfied.

I created an applet called Dued that has all the functionality of the above script, with a few added options for date and time processing. Repository home is located here. Updates soon.


        
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