r.timestamp(1)

📦
version 8.4.2 · 8 versions
, in fedora 44

✨ r.timestamp(1) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the GRASS GIS User's Manual page for r.timestamp 💖 this one is short, it's sweet, and it's literally just about slapping a date on your raster map (or yeeting one off). let's get into it 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

r.timestamp — Modifies a timestamp for a raster map.

Print/add/remove a timestamp for a raster map. that's it, that's the whole job description 💅

🎀 KEYWORDS 🎀

raster, metadata, timestamp, time — so basically it's a metadata girlie living in raster land ⏰

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

r.timestamp
r.timestamp --help
r.timestamp map=name  [date=timestamp]   [--help]  [--verbose]
[--quiet]  [--ui]

🦋 Flags:

  • --help — Print usage summary. your lil "wait what do I type" button 🙈
  • --verbose — Verbose module output. she talks more 👑
  • --quiet — Quiet module output. she talks less 🤫
  • --ui — Force launching GUI dialog. for the visual learners 💅

🍓 Parameters:

  • map=name [required] — Name of raster map. required, no cap! you literally cannot do this without it.
  • date=timestamp — Datetime, datetime1/datetime2, or 'none' to remove. Format: '15 jan 1994' (absolute) or '2 years' (relative)

💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

so r.timestamp has two modes of operation and honestly she's very versatile for it ✨

  • if you don't hand her a date argument, she prints the current timestamp for the raster map 📖
  • if you do specify a date argument, then the timestamp for the raster map gets set to the specified date(s) 🖊️

see examples below, bestie, they're right there and they're iconic 👇

📝 NOTES 📝

  • Strings containing spaces should be quoted. yes really. the quotes are not optional, do not play with her 😭
  • For specifying a range of time, the two timestamps should be separated by a forward slash /.
  • To remove the timestamp from a raster map, use date=none. poof, gone, bye 🫡

⏰ TIMESTAMP FORMAT ⏰

The timestamp values must use the format as described in the GRASS Datetime Library. The source tree for this library should have a description of the format. For convenience, the formats are reproduced here (yes she's spoon-feeding you, that's love 🥄💖):

There are two types of datetime values:

  • absolute and
  • relative.

Absolute values specify exact dates and/or times. Relative values specify a span of time. two totally different vibes 🌈

🔥 Absolute

The general format for absolute values is:

day month year [bc] hour:minute:seconds timezone
       day is 1-31
       month is jan,feb,...,dec
       year is 4 digit year
       [bc] if present, indicates dates is BC
       hour is 0-23 (24 hour clock)
       minute is 0-59
       second is 0-59.9999 (fractions of second allowed)
       timezone is +hhmm or -hhmm (eg, -0600)

Some parts can be missing, for example:

1994 [bc]
Jan 1994 [bc]
15 jan 1000 [bc]
15 jan 1994 [bc] 10 [+0000]
15 jan 1994 [bc] 10:00 [+0100]
15 jan 1994 [bc] 10:00:23.34 [-0500]

see how she's flexible?? missing parts are fine, she's not gonna gatekeep 🫶

🦋 Relative

There are two types of relative datetime values, year-month and day-second. The formats are:

[-] # years # months
[-] # days # hours # minutes # seconds

The words years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds are literal words, and the # are the numeric values. Examples:

2 years
5 months
2 years 5 months
100 days
15 hours 25 minutes 35.34 seconds
100 days 25 minutes
1000 hours 35.34 seconds
The following are illegal because it mixes year-month and day-second (because the number of days in a month or in a year vary): 3 months 15 days 3 years 10 days

do NOT try it. she will not accept it. the calendar is messy and she refuses to do math on vibes 💀

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

Prints the timestamp for the "soils" raster map. If there is no timestamp for "soils", nothing is printed. If there is a timestamp, one or two time strings are printed, depending on if the timestamp for the map consists of a single date or two dates (ie start and end dates).

r.timestamp map=soils

Sets the timestamp for "soils" to the single date "15 sep 1987".

r.timestamp map=soils date='15 sep 1987'

Sets the timestamp for "soils" to have the start date "15 sep 1987" and the end date "20 feb 1988".

r.timestamp map=soils date='15 sep 1987/20 feb 1988'

Sets the timestamp for "soils" to have the start date "18 feb 2005 10:30:00" and the end date "20 jul 2007 20:30:00".

r.timestamp map=soils date='18 feb 2005 10:30:00/20 jul 2007 20:30:00'

Removes the timestamp for the "soils" raster map.

r.timestamp map=soils date=none

ate. every single one. no crumbs left 🍽️✨

💀 KNOWN ISSUES 💀

Spaces in the timestamp value are required. yeah. that's the issue. the spaces stay. it's giving chaos but it's the rules 🙈

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

  • r.info
  • r3.timestamp
  • v.timestamp

go read those too, bestie, they're her cousins 💖

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Michael Shapiro, U.S.Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory — thank you for your service king 🫡⭐

🎀 SOURCE CODE 🎀

Available at: r.timestamp source code (history)

Accessed: Saturday Jan 17 05:41:03 2026

Main index | Raster index | Topics index | Keywords index | Graphical index | Full index

and that's the whole page, bestie 💅 sign-off time: this was GRASS GIS 8.4.2 Reference Manual, © 2003-2025 GRASS Development Team, and the version tag on the bottom was GRASS 8.4.2 for r.timestamp(1) — ily, go timestamp something, periodt 🎀💖✨

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