Convert org-time-stamp

Question

I need a function that can determine whether an org-time-stamp in a table equals the current date.

Example:

#+NAME: test
| date             | breakfast |
|------------------+-----------|
| <2015-11-06 Fri> | eggs      |
| <2015-11-07 Sat> | oatmel    |

I can get the timestamp from last line in above table with org-table-get-remote-range. For example:

(substring-no-properties (org-table-get-remote-range "test" "@<$1"))

Returns:

<2015-11-07 Sat>

How can I convert that string to a number so that I can compare it with something like:

(format-time-string "%Y%m%d" (current-time))?

Answer 1

You can use org-read-date to convert timestamp strings into internal times

(org-read-date nil t "<2015-11-06>" nil)

This can be compared to either (org-read-date nil t "today" nil) which always returns the current date or directly to the output of (current-time).