Zach Lysobey - A fun little CLI utility for writing markdown notes

July 22, 2019 A fun little CLI utility for writing markdown notes

I just made a fun command-line function to easily create markdown notes from the command line.

It creates a new file with a name like note_2019-07-22.md, apends a timestamp to it, and opens it in a text editor.

The editor defaults to vim but can also be code (for vscode), or whatever you like. If you chose vim (or vi) it will automatically put you at the end of the file.

note

(defaults to vim)
note code
note vim

I named it "note".

Source

function note {
    fileName="note_$(date +%F).md"

    echo $(date +%c) >> $fileName
    echo "========================" >> $fileName
    echo "" >> $fileName
    echo "" >> $fileName

    editor=${1:-"vi"}

    case "$editor" in
    "vi") editor_args="+$" ;;
    "vim") editor_args="+$" ;;
    *) editor_args="" ;;
    esac

    $editor $editor_args $fileName
}

Example Usage

$ note vim

(editor opens)

$ ls
note_2019-07-22.md

$ cat note_2019-07-22.md
Mon Jul 22 01:13:28 2019
========================