vi - Best way to insert timestamp in Vim?

Question

EditPad Lite has a nice feature (CTRL-E, CTRL-I) which inserts a time stamp e.g. "2008-09-11 10:34:53" into your code.

What is the best way to get this functionality in Vim?

(I am using Vim 6.1 on a Linux server via SSH. In the current situation a number of us share a login so I don't want to create abbreviations in the home directory if there is another built-in way to get a timestamp.)

Answer 1

To make it work cross-platform, just put the following in your vimrc:

nmap <F3> i<C-R>=strftime("%Y-%m-%d %a %I:%M %p")<CR><Esc>
imap <F3> <C-R>=strftime("%Y-%m-%d %a %I:%M %p")<CR>

Now you can just press F3 any time inside Vi/Vim and you'll get a timestamp like 2016-01-25 Mo 12:44 inserted at the cursor.

For a complete description of the available parameters check the documentation of the C function strftime().