Setup default date format like yyyy-mm-dd in Powershell?

Question

A simple & short question:

How can I setup a default date format in powershell like yyyy-mm-dd ? so any date output will be like this format?

or How to setup a date format globally in one script ?

Is there a way to output date only without time? when I output LastWriteTime, Default is

13-03-2014 14:51

I only need 13-03-2014 but 14:51.

Answer 1

A date in PowerShell is a DateTime object. If you want a date string in a particular format, just use the built-in string formatting.

PS C:\> $date = get-date
PS C:\> $date.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd")
2014-04-02

The LastWriteTime property of a file is a DateTime object also, and you can use string formatting to output a string representation of the date any way you want.

You want to do this:

gci -recu \\path\ -filter *.pdf | select LastWriteTime,Directory

You can use a calculated property:

get-childitem C:\Users\Administrator\Documents -filter *.pdf -recurse |
  select Directory, Name, @{Name="LastWriteTime";
  Expression={$_.LastWriteTime.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm")}}

Run

help select-object -full

and read about calculated properties for more information.