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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-17T05:12:19+00:00

The use case is shared by all (vim) developers around the world (IMHO) :

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The use case is shared by all (vim) developers around the world (IMHO) : we would like to update a tag and a timestamp on each write operations in the sources files. My attempt with the help of Barry Arthur is this :

Example of string to update on each writes

# 2013-01-09 01:04:31.0 +0100 / Me <me@domain.tld>

The vimrc code

" if not maped, :x don't call UpdateTimestamp()
map :x :wq
function! UpdateTimestamp()
  let old_pos = getpos('.')
  let old_search = histget("search", -1)
  g/^\(#\|\/\/\)\s\+\d\{4\}-\d\{2\}-\d\{2\}\s\+\d\{2\}:\d\{2\}:\d\{2\}\.\d\+\s\++\d\{4\}\s\+\/\s\+Me <me@domain.tld>.*/s/.*/\="# " . strftime('%F %H:%M:%S.0 %z') . " \/ Me <me@domain.tld>"/
  exe "normal /".old_search
  call setpos('.', old_pos)
endfunction

au BufWrite * call UpdateTimestamp()

problems not solved

  • the undo history should not be modified when updating the tag (if possible)
  • the position of the screen change on writes
  • there’s some not wanted errors displayed on the screen when the pattern is not found

question

Simple : how to solve these issues ?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You don’t need saving/restoring position at all, neither using setpos() nor winrestview(): you can just not move the cursor. Neither you need tricks to save/restore search: use search() function in place of :g and setline() in place of s/.*/\=:

    function! UpdateTimestamp()
  " Removed “.*” from the end of the pattern because it is pointless
  " Also made it use very-magic mode because otherwise it looks bad (too many escapes)
  " Also replaced \d\{2\} with \d\d because \d\d takes less characters
  let lnr=search('\v^(\#|\/\/)\s+\d{4}\-\d\d\-\d\d\s+\d\d\:\d\d\:\d\d\.\d+\s+\+\d{4}\s+\/\s+\VMe <me@domain.tld>', 'wn')
  if lnr
    " Matchstr gets comment leader. Above regex intended to work with # or // comments, but \=expression supported only the former, this got fixed
    call setline(lnr, matchstr(getline(lnr), '^\S\+')." " . strftime('%F %H:%M:%S.0 %z') . " / Me <me@domain.tld>")
  endif
endfunction

    . Note: there is still one difference between your and mine solution: here only one timestamp is updated. This issue can be fixed.

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