Format date and time in a Windows batch script

Question

In a Windows  Windows nbsp XP  batch script I need to format the current date and time for later use in files names  etc   It is similar to Stack Overflow question How to append a date in batch files  but with time in as well   I have this so far   echo  DATE  echo  TIME  set datetimef  date  -4   date  3 2   date  0 2    time  0 2   time  3 2   time  6 2  echo  datetimef    which gives   28 07 2009  8 35 31 01 2009 07 28   8 36 01   Is there a way I can allow for a single digit hour in  TIME   so I can get the following   2009 07 28  08 36 01

User · Answer

I tried the accepted answer and it works pretty well. Unfortunately the US Time Format appears to be H:MM:SS.CS, and the missing 0 on the front was causing parsing problems before 10 am. To get over this hurdle and also allow parsing of most any of the world time formats, I came up with this simple routine that appears to work quite well.

:ParseTime
rem The format of %%TIME%% is H:MM:SS.CS or (HH:MM:SS,CS) for example 0:01:23.45 or 23:59:59,99
FOR /F "tokens=1,2,3,4 delims=:.," %%a IN ("%1") DO SET /A "%2=(%%a * 360000) + (%%b * 6000) + (%%c * 100) + %%d"
GOTO :EOF

The nice thing with this routine is that you pass in the time string as the first parameter and the name of the environment variable you want to contain the time (in centiseconds) as the second parameter. For example:

CALL :ParseTime %START_TIME% START_CS
CALL :ParseTime %TIME% END_CS
SET /A DURATION=%END_CS% - %START_CS%

(*Chris*)

User · Answer

This batch script will do exactly what the O P  wants  tested on Windows XP SP3      I also used that clever registry trick described by  jph  previously which IMHO is the simplest way of getting 100  consistent formatting of the date to  yyyy MM dd  on any Windows system new or old  The change to one Registry value for doing this is instantaneous temporary and trivial  it only lasts a few milliseconds before it is immediately reverted back   Double-click this batch file for an instant demo  Command Prompt window will pop up and display your timestamp                                                                                            generates a custom formatted timestamp string using date and time     run this batch file for an instant demo                                                                                 ECHO OFF SETLOCAL  amp  MODE CON COLS 80 LINES 15  amp  COLOR 0A     --- CHANGE THE COMPUTER DATE FORMAT TEMPORARILY TO MY PREFERENCE  yyyy MM dd   REG COPY  HKCU Control Panel International   HKCU Control Panel International-Temp   f 2 gt nul  gt nul REG ADD  HKCU Control Panel International   v sShortDate  d  yyyy MM dd   f 2 gt nul  gt nul  SET MYDATE  date      --- REVERT COMPUTER DATE BACK TO SYSTEM PREFERENCE REG COPY  HKCU Control Panel International-Temp   HKCU Control Panel International   f 2 gt nul  gt nul REG DELETE  HKCU Control Panel International-Temp   f 2 gt nul  gt nul     --- SPLIT THE TIME  HH MM SS SS  TO THREE SEPARATE VARIABLES  HH   MM   SS SS  FOR  F  tokens 1-3 delims      A IN   echo  time    DO   SET HOUR   A SET MINUTES   B SET SECONDS   C       --- CHOOSE ONE OF THESE TWO OPTIONS      --- FOR 4 DIGIT SECONDS          REMOVES THE DOT FROM THE SECONDS VARIABLE  SS SS     SET SECONDS  SECONDS        --- FOR 2 DIGIT SECONDS          GETS THE FIRST TWO DIGITS FROM THE SECONDS VARIABLE  SS SS  SET SECONDS  SECONDS  0 2       --- FROM 12 AM TO 9 AM  THE HOUR VARIABLE WE EXTRACTED FROM  TIME  RETURNS A SINGLE DIGIT      --- WE PREFIX A ZERO CHARACTER TO THOSE CASES  SO THAT OUR WANTED TIMESTAMP    --- ALWAYS GENERATES DOUBLE-DIGIT HOURS  24-HOUR CLOCK TIME SYSTEM   IF  HOUR   0  SET HOUR 00  IF  HOUR   1  SET HOUR 01  IF  HOUR   2  SET HOUR 02  IF  HOUR   3  SET HOUR 03  IF  HOUR   4  SET HOUR 04  IF  HOUR   5  SET HOUR 05  IF  HOUR   6  SET HOUR 06  IF  HOUR   7  SET HOUR 07  IF  HOUR   8  SET HOUR 08  IF  HOUR   9  SET HOUR 09      --- GENERATE OUR WANTED TIMESTAMP SET TIMESTAMP  MYDATE    HOUR   MINUTES   SECONDS      --- VIEW THE RESULT IN THE CONSOLE SCREEN ECHO  ECHO    Generate a custom formatted timestamp string using date and time  ECHO  ECHO    Your timestamp is      TIMESTAMP  ECHO  ECHO  ECHO    Job is done  Press any key to exit       PAUSE  gt  NUL  EXIT

User · Answer

I usually do it this way whenever I need a date time string   set dt  DATE  6 4   DATE  3 2   DATE  0 2    TIME  0 2   TIME  3 2   TIME  6 2  set dt  dt   0    This is for the German date time format  dd mm yyyy hh mm ss   Basically I concatenate the substrings and finally replace all spaces with zeros   Short explanation of how substrings work    VARIABLE  num chars to skip num chars to keep    So to get just the year from a date like  29 03 2018  use    DATE  6 4          -----skip 6 characters           ---keep 4 characters

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Batch file to display Date and Time seprated by undescore                                                                      Read the system date                                                                    SET MyDate  DATE   SET MyDate  MyDate       SET MyDate  MyDate -     SET MyDate  MyDate       SET MyDate  MyDate       SET MyDate  MyDate                                                                          Read the system time                                                                    SET MyTime  TIME   SET MyTime  MyTime   0   SET MyTime  MyTime       SET MyTime  MyTime                                                                          Build the DateTime string                                                                    SET DateTime  MyDate   MyTime                                                                      Display the Date and Time as it is now                                                                    ECHO MyDate   MyDate   MyTime   MyTime   DateTime   DateTime                                                                       Wait before close                                                                    PAUSE

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This is my 2 cents for adatetime string  On MM DD YYYY systems switch the first and second  DATE   entries       REM                                                                                          REM CREATE UNIQUE DATETIME STRING FOR ADDING TO FILENAME     REM                                                                                          REM Can handle dd DDxMMxYYYY and DDxMMxYYYY  gt  CREATES YYYYMMDDHHMMSS  x  any character      REM                                                                                          REM CHECK for SHORTDATE dd DDxMMxYYYY      IF   DATE  0 1   GTR  3            SET DATETIME  DATE  9 4  DATE  6 2  DATE  3 2  TIME  0 2  TIME  3 2  TIME  6 2        ELSE       REM ASSUMES SHORTDATE DDxMMxYYYY         SET DATETIME  DATE  6 4  DATE  3 2  DATE  0 2  TIME  0 2  TIME  3 2  TIME  6 2                REM CORRECT FOR HOURS BELOW 10     IF  DATETIME  8 2  LSS 10 SET DATETIME  DATETIME  0 8 0 DATETIME  9 5      ECHO  DATETIME

User · Answer

The offset length formatting supported with the SET command in Windows will not allow you to pad the 0 as you seem to be interested in   However  you can code a BATCH script to check for the hour being less than 10 and pad accordingly with a different echo string   You will find some information on the SET command on this link       You can also change to other programming methods to get here     It is quite simple in unix bash  available with Cygwin on Windows  to just say   date   Y  m  d   H  M  S   And  it always pads correctly

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Using   you will run into a hex operation error when the time value is 7-9  To avoid this  use DelayedExpansion and grab time values with  min  1   An alternate method  if you have PowerShell is to call that   for  F  usebackq delims Z    i IN   powershell Get-Date -format u   do  set server-time   i

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In situations like this use a simple  standard programming approach  Instead of expending a huge effort parsing an unknown entity  simply save the current configuration  reset it to a known state  extract the info and then restore the original state  Use only standard Windows resources   Specifically  the date and time formats are stored under the registry key HKCU Control Panel International  in  MS definition   values    sTimeFormat  and  sShortDate    Reg is the console registry editor included with all Windows versions  Elevated privileges are not required to modify the HKCU key  Prompt  N  D  T G    Save current config to a temporary  unique name  subkey  Exit if copy fails Set DateTime  Set ran  Random  Reg copy  HKCU Control Panel International   HKCU Control Panel International-Temp ran    f If ErrorLevel 1 GoTO  EOF    Reset the date format to your desired output format  take effect immediately    Resetting the time format is useless as it only affect subsequent console windows   Reg add  HKCU Control Panel International   v sTimeFormat  d  HH mm ss     f Reg add  HKCU Control Panel International   v sShortDate   d  yyyy MM dd   f    Concatenate the time and  reformatted  date strings  replace any embedded blanks with zeros Set DateTime  date    time  0 2   time  3 2   time  6 2  Set DateTime  DateTime   0     Restore the original config and delete the temp subkey  Exit if restore fails Reg copy    HKCU Control Panel International-Temp ran    HKCU Control Panel International   f If ErrorLevel 1 GoTO  EOF Reg delete  HKCU Control Panel International-Temp ran    f   Simple  straightforward and should work for all regions   For reasons I don t understand  resetting the  sShortDate  value takes effect immediately in  a console window but resetting the very similar  sTimeFormat  value does NOT take effect  until a new console window is opened  However  the only thing changeable is the delimiter -  the digit positions are fixed Likewise the  HH  time token is supposed to prepend leading zeros but it doesn t   Fortunately  the workarounds are easy

User · Answer

The following may not be a direct answer but a close one   set hour  time  0 2  if   hour  0 1          set datetimef  date  -4   date  3 2   date  0 2   0 time  1 2   time  3 2   time  6 2  else set datetimef  date  -4   date  3 2   date  0 2    time  0 2   time  3 2   time  6 2    At least it may be inspiring

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Create a file called  search files bat  and place the contents below into the file   Then double click it   The temporary  THH  variable was put in place to handle the AM appropriately   If there is a 0 in the first 2 digits of the time  Windows ignores the rest of the file name of the LOG file   CD   SET THH  time  0 2  SET THH  THH   0  dir  s  b      gt   date  10 4 - date  4 2 - date  7 2   THH   time  3 2   time  6 2  LOG

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I ended up with this script   set hour  time  0 2  if   hour  0 1          set hour 0 hour  1 1  echo hour  hour  set min  time  3 2  if   min  0 1          set min 0 min  1 1  echo min  min  set secs  time  6 2  if   secs  0 1          set secs 0 secs  1 1  echo secs  secs   set year  date  -4  echo year  year       On WIN2008R2 e g  I needed to make your  set month  date  3 2   like below   otherwise 00 appears for MONTH  set month  date  4 2  if   month  0 1          set month 0 month  1 1  echo month  month  set day  date  0 2  if   day  0 1          set day 0 day  1 1  echo day  day   set datetimef  year  month  day   hour  min  secs   echo datetimef  datetimef

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Here is how I generate a log filename  based on http   ss64 com nt syntax-getdate html     ECHO OFF    Check WMIC is available WMIC EXE Alias     gt NUL 2 gt  amp 1    GOTO s error     Use WMIC to retrieve date and time FOR  F  skip 1 tokens 1-6    G IN   WMIC Path Win32 LocalTime Get Day  Hour  Minute  Month  Second  Year  Format table   DO      IF     L      goto s done       Set  yyyy   L       Set  mm 00  J       Set  dd 00  G       Set  hour 00  H       SET  minute 00  I       SET  second 00  K    s done     Pad digits with leading zeros       Set  mm   mm  -2        Set  dd   dd  -2        Set  hour   hour  -2        Set  minute   minute  -2        Set  second   second  -2   Set logtimestamp   yyyy -  mm -  dd    hour    minute    second  goto make dump   s error echo WMIC is not available  using default log filename Set logtimestamp     make dump set FILENAME database dump  logtimestamp  sql

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This script use a WMI interface accessed primary via WMIC tool  which is an integral part of Windows since Windows XP Professional  Home edition is supported too  but the tool is not installed by default   The script also implements a workaround of missing WMIC tool by creating and calling a WSH vbscript for access a WMI interface and write to console output the time with same format as WMIC tool provide    ECHO OFF REM Returns  RETURN REM Modify   RETURN  StdOut REM Required - mandatory  none REM Required - optionaly  format strings delimited by a space to format an output delimited by predefined delimiter REM    YYYY   4-digit year REM      MM   2-digit month REM      DD   2-digit day REM      hh   2-digit hour REM      mm   2-digit minute REM      ss   2-digit second REM      ms   3-digit millisecond  CALL  getTime    ECHO  RETURN  GOTO  EOF   REM SUBROUTINE REM Returns  RETURN REM Modify   RETURN REM Required - mandatory  none REM Required - optionaly  format strings delimited by a space to format an output delimited by predefined delimiter REM    YYYY   4-digit year REM      MM   2-digit month REM      DD   2-digit day REM      hh   2-digit hour REM      mm   2-digit minute REM      ss   2-digit second REM      ms   3-digit millisecond  getTime   SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion     SET DELIM -     WHERE  Q wmic exe     IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 FOR  F  usebackq skip 1 tokens      x IN   wmic exe os get LocalDateTime   DO  SET DT   x  amp  GOTO getTime Parse      SET  TMP  TEMP         ECHO Wscript StdOut WriteLine  GetObject  winmgmts root cimv2 Win32 OperatingSystem     LocalDateTime  gt    TMP  get time local-helper vbs      FOR  F  usebackq tokens      x IN   cscript   B   NoLogo    TMP  get time local-helper vbs    DO  SET DT   x  amp  GOTO getTime Parse       getTime Parse       SET  RET        IF   1  EQU              SET  RET  DT  0 4  DELIM  DT  4 2  DELIM  DT  6 2  DELIM  DT  8 2  DELIM  DT  10 2  DELIM  DT  12 2  DELIM  DT  15 3          ELSE           REM Not recognized format strings are ignored during parsing - no error is reported          getTime ParseLoop          SET  VAL           IF   1  EQU  YYYY  SET  VAL  DT  0 4           IF   1  EQU  MM    SET  VAL  DT  4 2           IF   1  EQU  DD    SET  VAL  DT  6 2           IF   1  EQU  hh    SET  VAL  DT  8 2           IF   1  EQU  mm    SET  VAL  DT  10 2           IF   1  EQU  ss    SET  VAL  DT  12 2           IF   1  EQU  ms    SET  VAL  DT  15 3           IF DEFINED  VAL              IF DEFINED  RET                SET  RET   RET  DELIM   VAL               ELSE                SET  RET   VAL                                   SHIFT          IF   1  NEQ    GOTO getTime ParseLoop           ENDLOCAL  amp  SET RETURN   RET  GOTO  EOF

User · Answer

Maybe something like this    call DateTime   for     in        Year    Y       Month   M       Day     D       Hour    H       Minutes I       Seconds S    do  for  f  tokens 1-2 delims        in       do  for  f  delims       in   echo    DT          do  echo        DT                OUTPUT    Year       DT Y    2014    Month      DT M    12    Day        DT D    17    Hour       DT H    09    Minutes    DT I    04    Seconds    DT S    35   pause gt nul   goto eof   DateTime      verify errorlevel 2 gt nul  amp   wmics Alias     gt nul 2 gt  amp 1      if not errorlevel 1            for  f  skip 1 tokens 1-6    a in   wmic path win32 localtime get day  hour  minute  month  second  year  format table   do  if not    f        set   DT D    a   amp  set   DT H    b   amp  set   DT I    c   amp  set   DT M    d   amp  set   DT S    e   amp  set   DT Y    f          else            set   DT T  1234567890              if errorlevel 1            for     in   iDate   sDate   iTime   sTime   F   Y   M   D   H   I   S   do  set   DT                      for     in   Date   Time   do  for  f  skip 2 tokens 1 3    a in   reg query  HKCU Control Panel International   v       2  gt nul   do  for  f   x in   echo    DT   a      do  if    x      a  set   DT   a    b           for  f  tokens 1-3 delims   DT T      a in    time    do  set   DT T    a  b  c             if errorlevel 1            if    DT iDate      0   set   DT F   DT D   DT Y   DT M    else if    DT iDate      1   set   DT F   DT D   DT M   DT Y    else if    DT iDate      2   set   DT F   DT Y   DT M   DT D             for  f  tokens 1-4  delims   DT sDate      a in   date t   do  for  f  tokens 1-3    x in   echo    DT F      do  set    x   a   amp  set    y   b   amp  set    z   c           for  f  tokens 1-3 delims   DT T      a in    time    do  set   DT H    a   amp  set   DT I    b   amp  set   DT S    c           for     in   iDate   sDate   iTime   sTime   F   T   do  set   DT                    for   i in   Y                   do  for  f   j in   echo     DT    i       do  set  a  DT    i     0  amp   for  f   k in   echo     DT    i   -4      do  set   DT    i     k       for   i in   M   D   H   I   S   do  for  f   j in   echo     DT    i       do  set  a  DT    i   100  amp   for  f   k in   echo     DT    i   -2      do  set   DT    i     k   exit b

User · Answer

ECHO OFF   Sets the proper date and time stamp with 24Hr Time for log file naming   convention  SET HOUR  time  0 2  SET dtStamp9  date  -4  date  4 2  date  7 2  0 time  1 1  time  3 2  time  6 2   SET dtStamp24  date  -4  date  4 2  date  7 2   time  0 2  time  3 2  time  6 2   if   HOUR  0 1           SET dtStamp  dtStamp9   else  SET dtStamp  dtStamp24    ECHO  dtStamp   PAUSE

User · Answer

Split the results of the date command by slash  then you can move each of the tokens into the appropriate variables   FOR  F  tokens 1-3 delims      a IN    date  4    DO   SET  Month   a SET  Day   b SET  Year   c   ECHO Month   Month  ECHO Day   Day  ECHO Year   Year

User · Answer

I came across this problem today and solved it with   SET LOGTIME  TIME   0    It replaces spaces with 0s and basically zero-pads the hour   After some quick searching I didn t find out if it required command extensions  still worked with SETLOCAL DISABLEEXTENSIONS

User · Answer

If PowerShell is installed  then you can easily and reliably get the Date Time in any format you d like  for example   for  f   a in   powershell -Command  Get-Date -format yyyy MM dd  HH mm ss    do set datetime   a move   oldfile    backup- datetime     Of course nowadays PowerShell is always installed  but on Windows XP you ll probably only want to use this technique if your batch script is being used in a known environment where you know PS is available  or check in your batch file if PowerShell is available      You may reasonably ask  why use a batch file at all if you can use PowerShell to get the date time  but  I think some obvious reasons are   a  you re not all that familiar with PowerShell and still prefer to do most things the old-fashioned way with batch files or  b  you re updating an old script and don t want to port the whole thing to PS

User · Answer

I like the short version on top of  The lorax   but for other language settings it might be slightly different    For example  in german language settings  with natural date format  dd mm yyyy  the month query has to be altered from 4 2 to 3 2    ECHO OFF   Sets the proper date and time stamp with 24h time for log file naming convention i e   SET HOUR  time  0 2  SET dtStamp9  date  -4  date  3 2  date  7 2  0 time  1 1  time  3 2  time  6 2   SET dtStamp24  date  -4  date  3 2  date  7 2   time  0 2  time  3 2  time  6 2   if   HOUR  0 1           SET dtStamp  dtStamp9   else  SET dtStamp  dtStamp24    ECHO  dtStamp    Outputs  20160727 081040    format  YYYYMMDD HHmmss  e g   the date-output of this post timestamp   PAUSE

User · Answer

If you don t exactly need this format   2009 07 28  08 36 01   Then you could use the following 3 lines of code which uses  date  and  time    set mydate  date     set mytime  time     set mytimestamp  mydate       mytime        Note  The characters   and   are removed and the character   and space is replaced with an underscore   Example output  taken Wednesday 8 5 15 at 12 49 PM with 50 seconds and 93 milliseconds    echo  mytimestamp  Wed 08052015 124950 93

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Use REG to save modify restore what ever values are most useful for your bat file   This is windows 7  for other versions you may need a different key name   reg save     HKEY CURRENT USER Control Panel International   tmp reg  y reg add      HKEY CURRENT USER Control Panel International   v sShortDate   d  yyyy-MM-dd   f set file  DATE - TIME   0  reg restore  HKEY CURRENT USER Control Panel International   tmp reg set file  file   -  set file  file   -  set file

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set hourstr    time  0 2  if   time  0 1         set hourstr 0 time  1 1   set datetimestr  date  0 4  date  5 2  date  8 2 - hourstr  time  3 2  time  6 2

User · Answer

This bat file  save as datetimestr bat  produces the datetime string 3 times   1  long datetime string with day of week and seconds   2  short datetime string without them and  3  short version of the code    echo off REM   date   0   replaces spaces with zeros set d  date   0  REM  set yyyy  d  -4   pulls the last 4 characters set yyyy  d  -4  set mm  d  4 2  set dd  d  7 2  set dow  d  0 3  set d  yyyy - mm - dd   dow   set t  TIME   0  REM   t      removes semi-colons REM Instead of above  you could use   t   -   to  REM replace semi-colons with hyphens  or any  REM non-special character  set t  t     set t  t      set datetimestr  d   t   echo  Long date time str    datetimestr   set d  d  0 10  set t  t  0 4  set datetimestr  d   t   echo Short date time str    datetimestr     REM Short version of the code above set d  date   0  set t  TIME   0  set datetimestr  d  -4 - d  4 2 - d  7 2   d  0 3   t  0 2  t  3 2  t  6 2  t  9 2   echo Datetimestr    datetimestr   pause   To give proper credit  I merged the concepts from Peter Mortensen  Jun 18  14 at 21 02  and opello  Aug 25  11 at 14 27      You can write this much shorter  but this long version makes reading and understanding the code easy

User · Answer

To generate a YYYY-MM-DD hh mm ss  24-hour  timestamp I use   SET CURRENTTIME  TIME  IF   CURRENTTIME  0 1         SET CURRENTTIME 0 CURRENTTIME  1   FOR  F  tokens 2-4 delims       A IN   DATE  T   DO  SET TIMESTAMP   C-  A-  B  CURRENTTIME

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CREATE UNIQUE DATETIME STRING IN FORMAT YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS                                                                                 FOR  f   a IN   WMIC OS GET LocalDateTime    FIND       DO SET DTS   a   SET DATETIME  DTS  0 8 - DTS  8 6      The first line always outputs in this format regardles of timezone  20150515150941 077000 120 This leaves you with just formatting the output to fit your wishes

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REM Assumes UK style date format for date environment variable  DD MM YYYY   REM Assumes times before 10 00 00  10am  displayed padded with a space instead of a zero  REM If first character of time is a space  less than 1  then set DATETIME to  REM YYYY-MM-DD-0h-mm-ss REM Otherwise  set DATETIME to  REM YYYY-MM-DD-HH-mm-ss REM Year  month  day format provides better filename sorting  otherwise  days grouped REM together when sorted alphabetically    IF   time  0 1   LSS  1       SET DATETIME  date  6 4 - date  3 2 - date  0 2 -0 time  1 1 - time  3 2 - time  6 2    ELSE      SET DATETIME  date  6 4 - date  3 2 - date  0 2 - time  0 2 - time  3 2 - time  6 2     ECHO  DATETIME

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You may use these     Parameters   date  4 2  -- month  date  7 2  -- days  date  10 4  -- years   time  1 1  -- hours  time  3 2  -- minutes  time  6 2  -- seconds  time  9 2  -- mili-seconds   date  4 2  date  7 2  date  10 4    MMDDYYYY  date  7 2  date  4 2  date  10 4    DDMMYYYY  date  10 4  date  4 2  date  7 2    YYYYMMDD

User · Answer

A nice single-line trick to avoid early variable expansion is to use cmd  c echo   time    cmd  c echo   time    amp  dir  s somelongcommand  amp  cmd  c echo   time

User · Answer

There is another easy way of doing it   set HH  time  0 2  if  HH  LEQ 9   set HH  time  1 1

User · Answer

I did it this way   REM Generate FileName from date and time in format YYYYMMTTHHMM  Time  T  gt  Time dat set  P ftime   lt  Time dat  set FileName LogFile date  6  date  3 2  date  0 2  ftime  0 2  ftime  3 2  log  echo  FileName       LogFile201310170928 log

User · Answer

As has been noted  parsing the date and time is only useful if you know the format being used by the current user  for example  MM dd yy or dd-MM-yyyy just to name two   This could be determined  but by the time you do all the stressing and parsing  you will still end up with some situation where there is an unexpected format used  and more tweaks will be be necessary   You can also use some external program that will return a date slug in your preferred format  but that has disadvantages of needing to distribute the utility program with your script batch   There are also batch tricks using the CMOS clock in a pretty raw way  but that is tooo close to bare wires for most people  and also not always the preferred place to retrieve the date time   Below is a solution that avoids the above problems  Yes  it introduces some other issues  but for my purposes I found this to be the easiest  clearest  most portable solution for creating a datestamp in  bat files for modern Windows systems  This is just an example  but I think you will see how to modify for other date and or time formats  etc   reg copy  HKCU Control Panel International   HKCU Control Panel International-Temp   f reg add  HKCU Control Panel International   v sShortDate  d  yyMMdd   f  REM reg query  HKCU Control Panel International   v sShortDate set LogDate  date  reg copy  HKCU Control Panel International-Temp   HKCU Control Panel International   f

User · Answer

I m really new to batch files and this is my code    I am not sure why  but I couldn t combine date  t and time  t together and I couldn t use  date  and  time  directly without a variable       ECHO OFF set ldt  date   time  echo  ldt  gt  gt  logs txt EXIT   It is kind of reused from others  the question was to get a formatted timedate to use as filename

User · Answer

For a very simple solution for numeric date for use in filenames use the following code   set month  date  4 2  set day  date  7 2  set curTimestamp  month  day  year   rem then the you can add a prefix and a file extension easily like this echo updates curTimestamp  txt

[windows] Format date and time in a Windows batch script

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