Subtracting time.Duration from time in Go

Question

I have a time.Time value obtained from time.Now() and I want to get another time which is exactly 1 month ago.

I know subtracting is possible with time.Sub() (which wants another time.Time), but that will result in a time.Duration and I need it the other way around.

Answer 1

In response to Thomas Browne's comment, because lnmx's answer only works for subtracting a date, here is a modification of his code that works for subtracting time from a time.Time type.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    now := time.Now()

    fmt.Println("now:", now)

    count := 10
    then := now.Add(time.Duration(-count) * time.Minute)
    // if we had fix number of units to subtract, we can use following line instead fo above 2 lines. It does type convertion automatically.
    // then := now.Add(-10 * time.Minute)
    fmt.Println("10 minutes ago:", then)
}

Produces:

now: 2009-11-10 23:00:00 +0000 UTC
10 minutes ago: 2009-11-10 22:50:00 +0000 UTC

Not to mention, you can also use time.Hour or time.Second instead of time.Minute as per your needs.

Playground: https://play.golang.org/p/DzzH4SA3izp