I am using the following simple line in my windows batch file to get the current time stamp to a String format so that I can use it later in the batch file to create a folder with same name.
set TIME_STAMP=%DATE:/=-%_%TIME::=-%
I observed that when the time is single digits, say 9:31 AM, I get the String like this:
08-10-2015_ 9.31.52.57
Notice the space between the characters _ and 9.
When the system time is say 10:31 AM, it all works fine, like
08-10-2015_10.31.52.57
Is there something I can do to make the time stamp as
08-10-2015_09.31.52.57
when I have hours in single digits?
just do this
set TIME_STAMP=%DATE:/=-%_%TIME::=-%
echo %TIME_STAMP: =0%
Probably the simpliest approach:
set "TIME_STAMP=%DATE:/=-%_%TIME::=-%"
set "TIME_STAMP=%TIME_STAMP: =0%"
Result:
==> echo "%TIME_STAMP%"
"08.10.2015_07-42-08,18"
==>
Related
This question already has answers here:
How do I get current date/time on the Windows command line in a suitable format for usage in a file/folder name?
(30 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
I'm trying to preserve the dates of files that I'm backing up onto an external drive, in the unlikely event that the dates get messed up for whatever reason (I had a previous experience where I lost date information and had no backup). I'm doing this through a batch file containing the following:
#ECHO OFF
cd E:\PCBackup
dir /s > dirlist.txt
I would simply run this batch file after running my backup using FreeFileSync. Then, if I need to, I can search the txt file for the filename and see its corresponding date.
However, when this batch file runs, if there is a previous dirlist.txt, then it is overwritten with the new dirlist.txt. So, in a scenario where the dates get messed up and I don't yet realize it, if I run this batch file, it will overwrite the previous dirlist.txt with one that has the messed up dates, and I'd lose the date information!
So, what I think I want it to do is, if dirlist.txt already exists, then create a new one, say something like dirlist1.txt, so that I can have several "backups" of the text file that I can manually delete if necessary.
I've seen that one can instead use >> with something like dir /s >> dirlist.txt to append to an existing file instead of overwriting, but I don't want to append if I don't have to, I'd still like to create a new file.
Is there a way to accomplish this? I'm also open to alternative/simpler ways of preserving the dates, if there are any. Please keep in mind that I know little about CMD commands or programming, outside of a computer science course I took years ago. Thank you.
You will be told there are umpteen duplicate ways to do this so in this 22 nd year of the 1st century :-) Windows has no native way of returning a sequential Iso Date the primary answer will be use powershell and for my locale it needs to be called in a suitable format, introducing a delay.
powershell get-date -format "{yyyy-MMM-ddTHH_mm+01Z}"
Note:- colons : are not allowed, and for me 20 seconds later on one machine (but it does get faster with use) and 12-5 seconds later on this one, I get
2021-07-07T21_55+01Z
but actually its now 2021-Jul-07 21:56
I have found that the MakeCab method is faster and reliable but again the format is not pure sequencing and the Jul will NOT appear before Dec in a file list without significant batch file processing.
2021-Dec-31 23:00:00.txt
2021-Jul-08 21:54:20.txt
So in a .cmd I prefer a more instant result thus my clock is set to International dates (You will need to look at your LOCALE clock setting bottom right for your own construction.)
set isodate=%date:~0,10%
instantly returns
isodate=2021-07-07 and I can then use that for filename
#ECHO OFF
cd E:\PCBackup
set "isodate=%date:~0,10%"
dir /s > %isodate%-dirlist.txt
dir returns includes 2021-07-07-dirlist.txt
If you want to run several times in a day use
#ECHO OFF
cd E:\PCBackup
set "isodate=%date:~0,10%"
set "isotime=%time:~0,2%-%time:~3,2%-%time:~6,2%"
dir /s > %isodate%T%isotime%+01Z-dirlist.txt
Amend that any way you wish for your timezone, thus your own clock whatever your date format be it :-
31/2021/12
look at the way I split %time :~ start#base 0 , # of chars %-
one example for an "English" clock date of 31/12/2021 would be simply reverse to
"isodate=%date:~6,4%-%date:~3,2%-%date:~0,2%"
For American %date%=Thu 07/08/2021 use
"isodate=%date:~10,4%-%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%"
Learned batch a while ago in school, haven't ever used it until now b/c I had an idea. Just for fun I wanted to mess around with powercfg batteryreport with my new laptop, but I want to archive. I was going to try and figure out how to have the file powercfg batteryreport spits out changed in some sort of numerical order but I don't even know where to begin, so I decided to just make a new line that takes the current file created and adds the date. All of this is taking place inside of a special folder I created, so pathing isnt necessary.
#echo off
powercfg batteryreport
rename "battery-report.html" "batteryreport %date%.html"
This exact script works without the date variable, but never with it in, but of course I need a variable present in order to have multiple reports saved, as opposed to it writing over itself every time. I've tried messing with all spacings, quotes vs no quotes, no luck. Help (or a better way, preferably with explanation) would be greatly appreciated.
In all likelihood, your date format contains / which is illegal in a filename.
Use %date:/=-% in place of %date%. this converts each / to - (see set /? from the prompt for docco)
Equally, you could use %time::=.% o convert the time to a version usable in a filename.
To remove dayname, you need to use an intermediate variable:
set "dateonly=%date:* =%"
ren ... "...%dateonly:/=-%..."
The * means "all of the characters up to and including the first space" and this is replaced by nothing (the string following the =)
see set /? from the prompt for details.
All,
Please guide me, how to print the o/p of below command in dos window? Being new to dos command, I do not know what below string mean?
set ts = %date:~4,2%%date:~7,2%-%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%
Thanks in advance
Welcome to the cmd prompt.
echo is the command that will display a value to the screen (ex: echo %date%)
set ts is setting a variable (ts) which can later be called like this: %ts%
%date% is a variable that will return the system date. %date:~4,2% will give the month (numeric) and %date:~7,2% gives the day of the month (numeric).
%time% is also a variable, but this on returns the time (24 hour). %time:~0,2% gives the hours (24 hour style so 1pm=13). %time:~3,2% gives the minutes.
That is setting an environment variable named ts. To display the value, add this line after it:
echo %ts%
This is setting a variable using some substring operations.
This %date:~4,2% means:
get the date from the machine;
remove the first 4 characters of it;
from the result, get the first 2 characters;
The rest is repeating this process and concatenating the result in a date and time formatted string.
I am making a program that automatically backs up files, stores up to a maximum of five of them, and has an option to restore any of the five files. When the files are backed up, it adds a date and time stamp in the format of YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_filename.ext. In order to restore the file, it is necessary to first cut out the date stamp.
The method I am currently using to cut the date stamp off of the beginning of the file is as follows.
set VAR=%VAR:~16%
echo %VAR%
The problem being, if the backed up file is called "20120825_140343_file name.txt", the above method will only return "file," omitting anything after the space. The spaces in the file names need to be preserved for them to be recognized by the program using them.
tl;dr I need to cut the string 20120825_140343_file name.txt into just "file name.txt", but my method just returns "file."
If delimiters or something would help I could separate the date stamp and file name with a different character, I.E. 20120825_140343-file-name.txt
Your method, though inelegant and inflexible, should work. This tells me that you are not storing the entire filename in VAR. That is why %var:~16% only results in file, and not file name.txt. I assume that you assign VAR like this somewhere:
SET VAR=%1
You'll need to either do this:
SET VAR=%1 %2
Or insert double-quotes around the file name when you call your batch file, and then set var like this to remove the quotes:
SET VAR=%~1
That should be enough to get your batch to work.
====================================================
But, to answer the question you actually asked, I'll show you a method of extracting "file name.txt" from var that will work even if there are more or even less than 16 prefix characters.
Use the for /f statement, specify the 3rd token, with underscores as a delimiter. Here is a self-contained example. (To run from the command-line, change %%x to %x.
SET VAR=20120825_140343_file name.txt
for /f "tokens=3 delims=_" %%x in ("%VAR%") do set VAR=%%x
ECHO %VAR%
Just remember, this solution will NOT fix your problem if you do not fix your code to assure your VAR variable has the entire filename in it.
Have you tried this?
set VAR="%VAR:~16%"
I'm having trouble generating a timestamp in a Windows batch file, because I get diferent date formats on different Windows versions.
My machine:
>echo %date%
>Tue 11/17/2009
Friends machine:
>echo %date%
>11/17/2009
I guess there has to be some way of getting the date (11/17/2009) from both strings using for /f. I've been trying and googling and can't find the answer.
Is there another way to get a timestamp without using %date%?
Check out doff.exe. I use this a lot for getting timestamps for naming log files. From its web site:
DOFF prints a formatted date and time, with an optional date offset, (e.g -1 prints yesterday's date, +1 prints tomorrow's date). To view all the options available, execute "doff -h". I typically use this utility for renaming log files so that they include a timestamp, (see the third example below). This code should compile under Unix/Linux, as well as DOS.
Sample commands:
C:\>doff
19991108131135
With no parameters the output is the current date/time in the following format: yyyymmddhhmiss
C:\>doff mm/dd/yyyy
11/08/1999
In the above example a date format specification is given.
#echo off
for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=/ " %%a in ('doff mm/dd/yyyy -1') do (
set mm=%%a
set dd=%%b
set yyyy=%%c)
rename httpd-access.log httpd-access-%yyyy%%mm%%dd%.log
The sample batch file above shows a neat way to rename a log file based on yesterday's date. The "for" command executes doff to print yesterday's date, (the "-1" parameter specifies yesterday), then extracts each component of the date into DOS batch file variables. The "rename" command renames "httpd-access.log" to "httpd-access-[yesterday's date].log"
Also check out Microsoft's now.exe, available in the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools. One bad thing I found out (the hard way) about it is it sets the ERRORLEVEL to the number of characters printed.
Looks like this:
c:\>now
Thu May 19 14:26:45 2011
Help:
NOW : Display Message with Current Date and Time
Usage : NOW [message to be printed with time-stamp]
NOW displays the current time, followed by its command-line arguments.
NOW is similar to the standard ECHO command, but with a time-stamp.
Use VBScript if you want to get independent date time settings:
thedate = Now
yr = Year(thedate)
mth = Month(thedate)
dy = Day(thedate)
hr = Hour(thedate)
min = Minute(thedate)
sec = Second(thedate)
WScript.Echo yr&mth&dy&hr&min&sec
Unfortunately, it can't be done directly, so you need to resort to hacks like GetDate.cmd.
There are lots of VBScript and small external commandline tools available too, which isn't something I'd take a dependency on unless you're already using something of that nature in your overall system.
Personally, I'd be trying to route around it by using PowerShell which neatly sidesteps the issue completely.
You don't need VBScript. You can do it with something like this:
echo %date:~-10,2%/%date:~-7,2%/%date:~-4,4%
Source
As I have posted in here:
Batch: Timestamp to UNIX Time
What about simple 1-line long C program returning UNIX timestamp? You can retrieve value from %errorlevel% in batch script.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>
int main(void)
{
return (int) time(NULL);
}
In my test in command prompt it worked:
C:\Users\dabaran\Desktop\cs50\src\C>.\time || echo %errorlevel% && set mytstamp=%errorlevel%
1419609373
C:\Users\dabaran\Desktop\cs50\src\C>echo %mytstamp%
1419609373