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Comment by Flimm | Hacker News Reader

I have a very similar script that lets me write notes to a file with today's filestamp. I use it to keep track of what I've done on which days.

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Yup, I have a script `worklog` which boils down to this:

    #!/bin/sh
    mkdir ~/.worklog || true
    if [ -z "$1" ]; then
       cat ~/.worklog/$(date +%w).md
    else
       echo "$(date): $*" >> ~/.worklog/$(date +%w).md
    fi

That gives a file per-week which can either have contents appended to it, or viewed. Usage is the obvious:

    $ worklog  "I did some stuff"
    $ worklog  [shows the output]

Another thing you can do is just use 'logger' and the syslog. You kinda have to be comfortable with viewing system logging, though; it's not for everyone - for example, I'm using sudo below just because I haven't set my user to view systemd's journal yet.

    $ logger hello
    $ logger <<EOF
    > this is a multiline
    > logging message
    > EOF
    $ sudo journalctl -t vacri
    -- Logs begin at Fri 2017-09-29 10:40:49 AEST, end at Mon 2017-10-02 23:44:13 AEDT
    Oct 02 23:40:24 myhost vacri[12320]: hello
    Oct 02 23:48:48 myhost vacri[12460]: this is a multiline
    Oct 02 23:48:48 myhost vacri[12460]: logging message

syslog is good for some use-cases (eg centralisation), and not so good for others. I imagine most people would prefer your directory-of-easily-findable-history.

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