In my .bat file I want to generate a unique name for files/directories based on date-time.
e.g.
Build-2009-10-29-10-59-00 The problem is that %TIME% won't do because it contains characters that are illegal in filename (e.g. :).
Is there something like tr in batch files?
Any other ideas how to solve this (that don't require extra command line utilities aside from the batch interpreter)?
EDIT: A better way of doing this is to take a date/time string that has a defined and unchanging format instead of using the locale-defined ones from %date% and %time%. You can use the following to get it:
for /f "skip=1" %%x in ('wmic os get localdatetime') do if not defined mydate set mydate=%%x It yields something like 20120730203126.530000+120 and you can use that to construct your file names.
(Old answer below)
You can simply replace the offending character with an empty string:
echo %time::=% The syntax %var:str1=str2% takes the environment variable (or pseudo-variable in case of %TIME% and replaces str1 by str2. If nothing follows after the equals sign then str1 is simply deleted.
In your specific case I think you'd want the following:
rem cut off fractional seconds set t=%time:~0,8% rem replace colons with dashes set t=%t::=-% set FileName=Build-%date%-%t% A more brute-force way in case you don't know whether colons are used (but the order of the time would be the same):
set FileName=Build-%date%-%time:~0,2%-%time:~3,2%-%time:~6,2% All preceding things, however, assume that you use standard ISO 8601 date format, i. e. 2009-10-29. I'd assume this as simply normal, but some people use other formats so be careful. But since you didn't ask about the date I was assuming you didn't have a problem there.
for /f "skip=1" %%x in ('wmic os get localdatetime') do if not defined mydate set mydate=%%x. The date/time format in mydate isn't going to change, it's always YYYYMMDDHHMMSS... and you can cut it up to your liking.Following up on @Joey's and @Kees' answers to make them instantly usable.
On the command line:
FOR /f %a IN ('WMIC OS GET LocalDateTime ^| FIND "."') DO SET DTS=%a SET DateTime=%DTS:~0,4%-%DTS:~4,2%-%DTS:~6,2%_%DTS:~8,2%-%DTS:~10,2%-%DTS:~12,2% echo %DateTime% In a BAT file:
@echo off REM See http://stackoverflow.com/q/1642677/1143274 FOR /f %%a IN ('WMIC OS GET LocalDateTime ^| FIND "."') DO SET DTS=%%a SET DateTime=%DTS:~0,4%-%DTS:~4,2%-%DTS:~6,2%_%DTS:~8,2%-%DTS:~10,2%-%DTS:~12,2% echo %DateTime% Example output:
2014-10-21_16-28-52 
I use this to create a unique file name for the execution of the batch file.
REM ****Set up Logging **** For /f "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set mydate=%%c-%%a-%%b) For /f "tokens=1-2 delims=/:" %%a in ("%TIME%") do (set mytime=%%a%%b) set mytime=%mytime: =0% set Logname="PCCU_%mydate%_%mytime%.log" Echo. >>%Logname% 2>>&1 Echo.=================== >>%Logname% 2>>&1 I had to add the line
set mytime=%mytime: =0% because I had the same problem where a blank was being entered before 10 AM, now I get 09 instead of 9. I also reuse the %mydate% and %mytime% variable for other files that I create with this script so that they all have the same date time stamp.
This routine, actually only one line, works on every system set to any date or time format.
Output of line 1 is in format 20140725095527.710000+120
The actual date/time format you need is determined in line 2. You can format it however you want.
Just add the resulting DateTime variable to your filename ie. Filename_%DateTime%.log
::======================================================================= ::== 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% | REM OUTPUT = 20140725-095527 I made this universal, Will work on any environment where date format may be different.
echo off if not exist "C:\SWLOG\" mkdir C:\SWLOG cd C:\SWLOG\ cmd /c "powershell get-date -format ^"{yyyyMMdd-HHmmss}^""> result.txt REM echo %time% > result.txt type result.txt > result1.txt set /p filename=<result1.txt echo %filename% del C:\SWLOG\result.txt del C:\SWLOG\result1.txt To make the code in the previous example work, I needed to adjust slightly. I presume this is because my PC is using a UK date format. To get back "2014-04-19" in mydate I needed:
For /f "tokens=1-3 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set mydate=%%c-%%b-%%a) Below I've pasted my total script, and included an example of how to use the filename
For /f "tokens=1-3 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set mydate=%%c-%%b-%%a) For /f "tokens=1-2 delims=/:" %%a in ("%TIME%") do (set mytime=%%a%%b) set mytime=%mytime: =0% set Logname="c:\temp\LogFiles\MyLogFile_%mydate%_%mytime%.log" Robocopy \\sourceserver\Music H:\MyBackups\Music /MIR /FFT /Z /XA:H /W:5 /np /fp /dcopy:T /unilog:%Logname% /tee Hope this helps!
Datetime stamp:
@echo off for /f "tokens=2 delims==" %%a in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime /value') do set "dt=%%a" set "YY=%dt:~2,2%" & set "YYYY=%dt:~0,4%" & set "MM=%dt:~4,2%" & set "DD=%dt:~6,2%" set "HH=%dt:~8,2%" & set "Min=%dt:~10,2%" & set "Sec=%dt:~12,2%" rem set "datestamp=%YY%%MM%%DD%" & set "timestamp=%HH%%Min%%Sec%" set "datestamp=%YYYY%%MM%%DD%" set "timestamp=%HH%%Min%%Sec%" set unique_number=%datestamp%%timestamp% echo %unique_number% 
If you can guarantee that the machine has a specific version of Python installed on it and accessible in the system's PATH, you can use this solution:
FOR /F "tokens=* USEBACKQ" %%F IN (`python -c "import datetime; print datetime.datetime.now().replace(microsecond=0).isoformat().replace(':', '-')"`) DO ( SET TIMESTAMP=%%F ) ECHO %TIMESTAMP% This will put the current local ISO-8601(ish) date representation into a %TIMESTAMP% variable and echo it out, like so:
2017-05-25T14:54:37 I've put replace(':', '-') after the isoformat() so that the resultant string can be used in a filename or directory, since : is a forbidden character in the Windows filesystem.
