Keeping track of podcast times with a simple bash script on Linux

I was recording some podcast audio tonight and wanted to be able to press a single key when I reached a significant moment, so I could add the times to the show notes.

I couldn’t find anything that already did this, so I wrote a tiny bash script. I ran this script and pressed Enter whenever I wanted a time recorded:

T=0
echo
while sleep 1; do
    echo -n -e "\e[1A"
    echo $(($T / 60))m $(($T % 60))s
    T=$(($T + 1))
done

The output looks like this:

$ ./times.bash 
0m 41s
6m 16s
9m 59s
13m 30s

The time ticks along, and when you press Enter that time stamp is recorded. You can copy this text out of your terminal to use in show notes. On most terminals you can copy text by selecting it with the mouse and pressing Ctrl-Shift-v.

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