Wes' Puzzling Blog

I hope none of your users ever set their PC to a non-US locale.

Yes that is true but this is just a simple example which can be generalized to other strings.

Yes Wes, really, what were you thinking?
ALWAYS LOCALIZE YOUR STRINGS!!!!! DUH :-P

Here is a German Version
:: C:\>date /t
:: 26.08.2005

@For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=. " %%A in ('Date /t') do @(
Set Day=%%A
Set Month=%%B
Set Year=%%C
)

@echo DAY = %Day%
@echo Month = %Month%
@echo Year = %Year%

Thanks Bernd!

See how easy that was to translate to another language. A simple example which can be generalized was all I was after ;)

hehehe :)

Just the ticket, Thank you very much

I had to change it for my 2003 server with MMddYYYY cls echo on @For /F "tokens=1,2,3 delims=/ " %%A in ('Date /t') do @( Set Month=%%A Set Day=%%B Set Year=%%C Set fDate=%%C-%%A-%%B Set fileDate="F:\BestBackup\Best_%Year%%Month%%Day%.zip" ) @echo %fDate% @echo %fileDate%

Does anyone know if its possible to get the day in string format such as 'FRIDAY'? i want to use it in a if-statement so I can run a file on a specific date.

If you 'date /t' gives you output like 'Tue 09/26/2006' then below can provide you three letters of a day like 'Tue" for Tuesday. @For /F "tokens=1 delims= " %%A in ('Date /t') do @( Set DayName=%%A ) @echo DAY = %DayName%

Thanks Wez, just what I was looking for.

Thanks a lot, that was exactly what I was looking for, too. the /F in FOR statement should be mentionned in every batch tuto :))

Thanks again, Wes !

Very Useful One ,

thanks

Csn we get the time of the folders when there are created. I am trying to parse folder structure according to the latest timestamp. i want to get the time of latest created folder

helped me a lot!

thanks sooo much

Thanks for posting.

Why not just do this?

Variables gives today's date in a format like 2007_09_17 -> YYYY_MM_DD

Take the variable %date%, then return all characters from 4 onwards. Counting starts at 0.

%date:~10,4% means give me the first four characters after the 10th one in the string.

set FileDate=%date:~10,4%_%date:~4,2%_%date:~7,2%

FileName_%FileDate%.txt

Seems Microsoft has made it simpler: support.microsoft.com/.../555314

how about if "date /t" returns 10Oct07?

Hi,

This is the great blog site to learn.I did tried to use the same command but it keeps prompting me %%A was unexpected at this time.Can you kindly help in progressing

set folder=%date:~-4,4%%date:~-10,2%%date:~-7,2%archive

the :~-0,4 is actually a substring command

The easiest way:

www.huweb.hu/.../realdate.htm

Easiest way is to just use PowerShell :)

I know that's a worthless comment, but it's really amazing to look back at the convoluted way of batch parsing as compared to what's available in PowerShell.  Going back to CMD is almost as bad as when I had to switch from Bash to CMD.  

Mine refuse to give me the year,

Using on XP

Will this work on server 2003 x64

Thanks for the post, worked perfectly fine for me, though i changed the tokens to 1-1 which gave me the day of the week, which was what i was looking for, as i was writing a backup script based on the day of the week.

Why not change your regional settings so that the short date format is YYYY-MM-DD, or whatever you want it to be? Then you can just use %date%

thanks a lot mate.. just exactly the code that I need :D

SET Year=%DATE:~6,4%

SET Month=%DATE:~3,2%

SET Day=%DATE:~0,2%

Of course this depends on regional date setting on your pc this is using format dd,mm,yyyy

Thanks for the date format in YMD it helped me a lot to take daily backup.

Excellent blog.  Is there any way to get the Month in MMM format (Sep,Dec etc.)

Benjamin_massa@hotmail.com

Thanks - this post is really useful. There may well be a better way, but the following will convert the month to a Mid name:

@echo off

SET Month=%DATE:~3,2%

if %Month%==01 set Month=JAN

if %Month%==02 set Month=FEB

if %Month%==03 set Month=MAR

if %Month%==04 set Month=APR

if %Month%==05 set Month=MAY

if %Month%==06 set Month=JUN

if %Month%==07 set Month=JUL

if %Month%==08 set Month=AUG

if %Month%==09 set Month=SEP

if %Month%==10 set Month=OCT

if %Month%==11 set Month=NOV

if %Month%==12 set Month=DEC

echo %Month%

Fantastic. this is exactly what i needed to create a series of backups.

Thanx a lot.

I am using Windows XP Pro... whoever gave the last solution deserves a big thanks.. I was looking for this code... but you made a little mistake.. coz Win XP uses this format Day mm-dd-yyyy  the actual coding should be :

@echo off

SET Month=%DATE:~4,2%

if %Month%==01 set Month=JAN

if %Month%==02 set Month=FEB

if %Month%==03 set Month=MAR

if %Month%==04 set Month=APR

if %Month%==05 set Month=MAY

if %Month%==06 set Month=JUN

if %Month%==07 set Month=JUL

if %Month%==08 set Month=AUG

if %Month%==09 set Month=SEP

if %Month%==10 set Month=OCT

if %Month%==11 set Month=NOV

if %Month%==12 set Month=DEC

echo %Month%

Very very useful :) Thanks a lot.

Hi, I need to change to date format of a file xxxxx.txt2009-05-10

to

xxxxx.txt2009/05/10

Is there an easy wasy to do this?

Files in windows exp can't contain the "/" character, it causes issues.

For /f "tokens=1,2,3,4,5 delims=/. " %%a in ('date/T') do set CDate=%%d-%%b-%%c

@echo data = %CDate%

This is in the Year-Month-Day that is most common now days