Comments on Letters from the End of Civilization: DOS Batch File Fun: Creating a subdirectory named ...

Thanks for your post! I was looking something li...

2009-04-15T07:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks for your post!

I was looking something like this to use in dos systems to do automatic backups with date and timestamp. If copy/paste the following line in dos console, it will show the date, time in my desired format and also the time in standard format in order to make a comparison:

echo %date:~-4,4%.%date:~-10,2%.%date:~-7,2% %time:~-0,
2%%time:~3,-6%%time:~6

Geez, there are at least 10 examples here but once...

2008-08-28T14:10:28.864-07:00

Geez, there are at least 10 examples here but once you construct a date string you can use it in any DOS command.

echo %MyDirectoryname%

md %MyDirectoryname%

copy * %MyDirectoryname%

Notepad.exe %MyDirectoryname%\ABC.TXT

Winzip %MyDirectoryname%

etc.

How would you change to this newly created subdire...

2008-08-28T13:23:00.000-07:00

How would you change to this newly created subdirectory? I would like to change to this subdirectory so that I can copy files into this newly created subdirectory. Thanks for your help.

toolman's fix for the invalid number issue didn't ...

2008-08-05T11:23:00.000-07:00

toolman's fix for the invalid number issue didn't help me b/c it changed month = 10 into month = 1

here is my script:

@echo off

:: find the year
set year=%DATE:~10,4%

:: find the current month
set /a m1=%DATE:~4,1%
IF %m1% ==0 (set month=%DATE:~5,1%) ELSE (set month=%DATE:~4,2%)

echo current month
echo ------------------
echo

For the invalid number issue, try this...set month...

2008-08-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

For the invalid number issue, try this...

set month=%month:0=%

...then try SET /a MONTH=%MONTH%-1

It doesn't like the 0, so this will remove it.

Thanks to evryone on this post...this has been a great help!

This was all very useful. Thanks to all.I need ye...

2008-08-05T05:44:00.000-07:00

This was all very useful. Thanks to all.

I need yesterday's date for an automated daily function too and elected for a quick cheat solution!

Rather than calculating month-1, adjusting for January, calculating day-1 and wondering how many days previous month had (30,31,28 ...)
I calculate the value I will need tomorrow from today's date and store it in a variable , and so

SET /a MONTH=%MONTH%-1returns the errorInvalid num...

2008-08-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

SET /a MONTH=%MONTH%-1

returns the error

Invalid number. Numeric constants are either decimal (17),
hexadecimal (0x11), or octal (021).

Everything you needed was already here but this wi...

2008-06-09T10:02:42.148-07:00

Everything you needed was already here but this will solve your problem.

Note that my computer name does not conform to yours, so I created a variable named "Computer"

@echo off

set Computer=123-456-789
echo %Computer%

set A=%Computer:~0,3%
set B=%Computer:~4,3%
set C=%Computer:~8,3%

echo %A% %B% %C%

pause

What I need to do is to parse %ComputerName% to cr...

2008-06-09T07:39:00.000-07:00

What I need to do is to parse %ComputerName% to create another variable to be used in a batch process. I need various parts of the variable but not the whole thing. The variable result would be in the fornmat xxx-xxx-xxx and I would need the first 3 characters at one point and the second 3 characters at another. I would certainly appreciate it if one of you caouls put me on the right track for

Thanks !A priceless public service !

2008-05-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks !

A priceless public service !

This has certainly come in handy! First off, I wa...

2008-04-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

This has certainly come in handy! First off, I was trying to create a text file with a list of Excel document paths within directories, along with their last-modified dates. The only way I could figure how to do this was to append to a text file, which would mean I would have to delete the file each time. However, with using a date/time-stamp for the file name I no longer need to worry about

Excellent, just excellent

2008-04-16T23:33:00.000-07:00

Excellent, just excellent

Thanks for all the information. I will book mark t...

2008-02-27T01:51:00.000-08:00

Thanks for all the information. I will book mark this page for future reference.

phew, the trailing space in the time fix saved me ...

2008-02-25T02:49:00.000-08:00

phew, the trailing space in the time fix saved me heaps of time - THANKS!

to boil it down in case someone missed it - very n...

2008-02-21T17:29:00.000-08:00

to boil it down in case someone missed it - very neat and easy filename with formatted date and time

set current_date=%date:/=-%
creates new variable and replaces forward slashes / (in %date%) with hyphen -

set current_time=%time: =0%
new variable created with spaces replaced by zeros 0

set current_time=%current_time::=-%
process current_time again to

Apparently MS's latest XP patch has just broken th...

2008-02-21T01:21:00.000-08:00

Apparently MS's latest XP patch has just broken this formatting, as far as I can make out the initial tilde is not parsed correctly and DATE or TIME commands must be escaped in percentages.

thank you for suggestion, but this is exactly what...

2008-02-19T06:52:00.000-08:00

thank you for suggestion, but this is exactly what I need to do, so I think there was something wrong with my Dos version since changing the command to the following works, by the way, this is amazing website, I learned a lot from you.

set datename=%DATE:~-6,3%%DATE:~-9,2%

will create Feb18 directory.

You did it wrong.Just look what TODAY is set to by...

2008-02-15T13:04:04.976-08:00

You did it wrong.

Just look what TODAY is set to by typing

SET TODAY

you get 5/22/

Sometimes you have to do your own debugging.

Hi, I am trying to save today date in a variable a...

2008-02-15T10:47:00.000-08:00

Hi, I am trying to save today date in a variable and create a directory using that variable (I do this because my batch file will run 18 hours and I need to save today date somewhere,)

I used this command, but it is not working, any help please?

SET TODAY = %date:~-6,3%%date:~-9,2%
mkdir %TODAY%

THX & Smile Chrisusing SET paddedtime=%time: =0% t...

2008-02-14T01:21:00.000-08:00

THX & Smile Chris
using SET paddedtime=%time: =0% to zero pad is an absolutely brilliant shortcut
Shame you can't combine this with ~0,2 in one command. But this has still saved me lines of code,

your code helped me alot to set up a heavy process...

2008-02-13T10:55:00.000-08:00

your code helped me alot to set up a heavy process....... thank a bunch....

Here's another way to solve the no zero padding ho...

2007-09-28T02:57:00.000-07:00

Here's another way to solve the no zero padding hour problem with %TIME%:

SET current_time=%time: =0%

This replaces the spaces with zeros. You can then parse this variable to get the zero padded hour, e.g:

%current_time:~0,2%

Excellent - /a saved the day!

2007-09-13T02:23:00.000-07:00

Excellent - /a saved the day!

Many thanks , this really helped me outSaved me a ...

2007-07-02T05:34:00.000-07:00

Many thanks , this really helped me out

Saved me a lot of trouble

This is brilliant - many thanks.

2007-05-02T15:52:00.000-07:00

This is brilliant - many thanks.