Re: dynamic date arithmetic in a macro or otherwise (simulating a "date counter")?

[Matt Price <moptop99@gmail.com>]

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On Tue, Aug 22, 2017 at 8:14 PM, Sacha Chua <sacha@sachachua.com> wrote:

> org-clone-subtree-with-time-shift might be a good starting point, too. It
> could be interesting to be able to replace dates within text and
> priorities. Good luck!
>

Interesting, I didn't know about `org-clone-subtree-with-time-shjift`.
thank you.

So, cloning isn't necessarily what I'm looking for; I'm often working with
documents that need to be largely reused with modifications. That means
that abo-abo's tiny isn't quite right for me, either.  So I've written the
following; it still feels really clumsy but it seems to work for now! It's
loosely based on some code that Jon Kitchin wrote for me on this list about
2 years ago (!!). Here it is:

#+MACRO: ts (eval (get-ts+7))


#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
    (defun get-ts+7 ()
    (interactive)
    (let ((base-date (save-excursion
                 (re-search-backward
                  (org-re-timestamp 'all))
                 (match-string 0)))
          (result nil))
      (with-temp-buffer
        (org-mode)
        (insert base-date )
        (backward-char)
        (org-timestamp-change 7 'day)
        (end-of-buffer)
        (insert "  ")
        (end-of-buffer)
        (setq result (save-excursion
                       (re-search-backward
                        (org-re-timestamp 'all))
                       (match-string 0))))
      result))
#+END_SRC

There's no error-checking, but basically you just insert the date of the
first weekly meeting and all the other dates update themselves
automatically on export.  It's pretty cool.  One next step would be to
allow more complex repetition cycles (e.g., to repeat eveyr tuesday and
thursday, or monday Wednesday Friday, etc.).

So now my headlines all just look like this:

** Week {{{n}}} ({{{ts}}}): Topic

Still working on that tree merge idea, will check back in on that other
thread if I get anywhere with it.

Thanks to both Adam and Sacha for the help! I'd love to hear any other
suggestions people might have.

Matt

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