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

<p>What is the best way to get this functionality in Vim?</p>

<p>(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.)</p>

http://kenno.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/vim-tip-insert-time-stamp/
Tried it out, it works on my mac:
```
```
:r! date
```
```
produces:
```
```
Thu Sep 11 10:47:30 CEST 2008
```
```
This:
```
```
:r! date "+\%Y-\%m-\%d \%H:\%M:\%S"
```
```
produces:
```
```
2008-09-11 10:50:56
```
```