ts

generic cli timestamp parser and calculator tool

Usage

This is ts, a timestamp tool.

Usage: ts <time string> [<time string>]
-d --diff     Calculate difference between two timestamps (default).
-a --add      Add two timestamps (second parameter must be a time).
-f --format   For diffs: duration, hour, min, sec, msec.
              For timestamps: datetime, rfc3339, date, time, unix, string.
              string is a strftime(1) format string. datetime is
              the default.
-u --unit    Add unit to the output of timestamp diffs.
   --debug    Show debugging output.
-v --version  Show program version.
-h --help     Show this help screen.
-e --examples Show examples or supported inputs.

Examples

# diff between to day and yesterday 10 am
% date && ts today "10am yesterday"
Wed Sep 24 02:05:03 PM CEST 2025
14h0m0s

# show timestamp from a couple days ago
% date && ts "3 days ago"
Wed Sep 24 02:04:42 PM CEST 2025
2025-09-21 14:04:42.428910108 +0200 CEST

# show timestamp of one hour and 45 minutes before (-d is the defaul)
% date && ts -d now 1h45m
Wed Sep 24 02:04:14 PM CEST 2025
2025-09-24 12:19:14.932440045 +0200 CEST

# 10 hours from now
% date && ts --add now 10h 
Wed Sep 24 02:03:31 PM CEST 2025
2025-09-25 00:03:31.304518854 +0200 CEST

To see a comprehensive list of supported inputs, call ts -e.

Installation

The tool does not have any dependencies. Just download the binary for your platform from the releases page and you're good to go.

Installation using a pre-compiled binary

Go to the latest release page and look for your OS and platform. There are two options to install the binary:

Directly download the binary for your platform, e.g. ts-linux-amd64-0.0.2, rename it to ts (or whatever you like more!) and put it into your bin dir (e.g. $HOME/bin or as root to /usr/local/bin).

Be sure to verify the signature of the binary file. For this also download the matching ts-linux-amd64-0.0.2.sha256 file and:

cat ts-linux-amd64-0.0.2.sha25 && sha256sum ts-linux-amd64-0.0.2

You should see the same SHA256 hash.

You may also download a binary tarball for your platform, e.g. ts-linux-amd64-0.0.2.tar.gz, unpack and install it. GNU Make is required for this:

tar xvfz ts-linux-amd64-0.0.2.tar.gz
cd ts-linux-amd64-0.0.2
sudo make install

Installation from source

You will need the Golang toolchain in order to build from source. GNU Make will also help but is not strictly neccessary.

If you want to compile the tool yourself, use git clone to clone the repository. Then execute go mod tidy to install all dependencies. Then just enter go build or - if you have GNU Make installed - make.

To install after building either copy the binary or execute sudo make install.

Report bugs

Please open an issue. Thanks!

License

This work is licensed under the terms of the General Public Licens version 3.

Author

Copyleft (c) 2025 Thomas von Dein