Creating a DateTime object with a specific UTC DateTime in PowerShell

datetime powershell utc
M. Dudley picture M. Dudley · May 7, 2012 · Viewed 90k times · Source

I'm trying to create a DateTime object with a specific UTC timestamp in PowerShell. What's the simplest way to do this?

I tried:

Get-Date
    -Format (Get-Culture).DateTimeFormat.UniversalSortableDateTimePattern
    -Date "1970-01-01 00:00:00Z"

but I get this output:

1969-12-31 19:00:00Z

It's a few hours off. Where's my lapse in understanding?

Answer

M. Dudley picture M. Dudley · May 7, 2012

The DateTime object itself is being created with the proper UTC time. But when PowerShell prints it out it converts it to my local culture and time zone, thus the difference.

Proof:

$UtcTime = Get-Date -Date "1970-01-01 00:00:00Z"
$UtcTime.ToUniversalTime()

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