If Formulas with Text instead of numbers
 

I need to a formular to do the following:

For example is Cell A1 = "a" then I want column A2 to show the date of when
that was inputted. I would have thought I would have had to put the
following:

=IF(A1=a,"=today()")

Although that doesn't seem to be the case...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,