Tips & Tricks Tuesday: Baking some task batches with a shell script

When you have a set of tasks you do frequently, it can be handy to have them ready to go each time. This week’s tip, shared by fabianhemmert, demonstrates this for business trips with a handy shell script that even generates the due dates.

I often go on business trips, for which I find myself always add the same tasks: Book the flight and hotel (timed three weeks in advance), pack (timed on the day before) and file an expense report (timed on the day after the event).

I wrote a little shell script (based on rumember) that automates this. It calculates the relative dates and makes a list of tasks, in relative timing to the “main” thing. It can surely be adjusted to suit your needs in terms of timed tasks that often occur together:

--- trip --
#!/bin/bash
if [ -z "$2" ]
then
echo ""
echo "Syntax: trip TITLE 31.05.2015"
else
day=`date -jf '%d.%m.%Y' $2 '+%d.%m.%Y'`
day_after=`date -v+1d -ujf"%d.%m.%Y" $day +%d.%m.%Y`;
day_before=`date -v-1d -ujf"%d.%m.%Y" $day +%d.%m.%Y`;
threeweeks_before=`date -v-21d -ujf"%d.%m.%Y" $day +%d.%m.%Y`;
#cat > todo.txt << EOL
ru Book Flight $1 $threeweeks_before '#Timed'
ru Book Hotel $1 $threeweeks_before '#Timed'
ru Pack for $1 $day_before '#Timed'
ru Expense Report $1 $day_after '#Timed'
#EOL
#cat todo.txt
#mail -s "" xxxxxxxxxxxxxx+import@rmilk.com < todo.txt
fi
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Thanks for sharing this tip, fabianhemmert! You’re our Tips & Tricks Tuesday winner this week.

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