townx

Attached is my Ruby script for parsing log files I keep at work. I have to complete a weekly report, and this forms the basis of that; as I don't keep regular office hours (I flexi-work around child care), it also helps me keep track of the hours I've worked.

The basic principle of operation is as follows:

1. I create a file for each working week, called something like week45.log
2. During the week, I record bits of activity I do (see below); I also note down stuff I plan to do next (again, see below)
3. At the end of the week, I run parse_work_log <file name> > summary.out on the file to produce a log of what I've done
4. If anything goes wrong, I tend to edit the work log and regenerate, so I can just keep the log (not the summary)
5. I cut and paste from the summary.out file into an email I send round

The format of the file is deliberately simple to make it easy to maintain; there are a handful of formatting rules. An example is shown below.

**********
2009-12-21

09:30-12:00    Researching this and that #research
12:00-13:00    -Lunch
13:00-14:00    More research
14:00-18:00    Writing some application #coding

**********
2009-12-22

09:30-10:00    Admin #Admin
10:00-10:15    -Break
10:00-12:00    Found out something rather marvellous #Very important research
12:00-12:45    -Lunch
12:45-18:00    Writing another application #coding

**********
+NEXT Have lots of fun banging my head on a brick wall
+NEXT Reinstall my operating system

Which, when parsed, produces this on stderr:

*************************************

Worked 15.25 hours

And this on stdout:

*************************************
This week:

Admin:

  * Admin

Very important research:

  * Found out something rather marvellous

coding:

  * Writing some application
  * Writing another application

research:

  * Researching this and that

*************************************
Next:

  * Have lots of fun banging my head on a brick wall
  * Reinstall my operating system

Notes on formatting:

• The asterisks and dates are just there to make it more readable - they're basically ignored
• An entry is a single line with the format HH:MM-HH:MM <...whitespace...> <text> <#optional tag>\n
• The time span for an entry is added to the total time, unless the entry text contains -Lunch or -Break
• # creates a tagged entry which gets included in the report; it appears as a bullet point with the tag as its heading; any entries with the same tag get aggregated under a single heading; tags and entries appear in the order they occur in the file
• Any line starting with +NEXT gets listed in the Next section at the end; tags don't work on this (could, but don't at the moment)

It is pretty primitive, but it does the job for me.

Installation: there isn't any, really. It works from the command line and needs Ruby. The licence? BSD, I guess.