Re: changing all timestamps in a document by a certain value?

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm revising my course syllabi for next Fall and therefore need to
> update all the timestamps.  In this case, I need to add 361 days to
> every stamp.  Is there a function somewhere that can read a timestamp,
> convert it to a numerical value, change the value, and then record the
> new value in the right format? It would make my life easier if I could
> at least define a macro to do this. 
> 

You might be able to do more precise surgery with org-element (just
guessing here: I haven't done anything with org-element yet), but if you
can search for the timestamps simply, you might be able to get away with
just a keyboard macro, e.g. if all timestamps are of the form
<YYYY-MM-DD ...> and *nothing else* looks like that, then a keyboard
macro that does something like the following:

     search for "<201"
     advance a few chars to get to the DD part
     ESC 361 S-<up>

might be all that you need. Then you repeat (once) with C-x e or (many
times) with C-u 1000 C-x e.

But it really depends on identifying a search string that will not lead
you astray.  Also make sure you save a backup of your file before you
start - you may have to do this a couple of times before you get it
right.

Assuming that the simple search above is sufficient, doing

C-x ( C-s < 2 0 1 RET 6*C-f ESC 3 6 1 <S-up> C-x )

to define the macro should be enough. kmacro-edit-macro then shows me this:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
;; Keyboard Macro Editor.  Press C-c C-c to finish; press C-x k RET to cancel.
;; Original keys: C-s < 2 0 1 RET 6*C-f ESC 3 6 1 <S-up>

Command: last-kbd-macro
Key: none

Macro:

C-s			;; isearch-forward
<			;; self-insert-command
2			;; self-insert-command
0			;; self-insert-command
1			;; self-insert-command
RET			;; org-return
6*C-f			;; forward-char
ESC
3			;; self-insert-command
6			;; self-insert-command
1			;; self-insert-command
<S-up>			;; org-shiftup
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

HTH,
Nick