Creating a file name as a timestamp in a batch job

windows batch-file cmd timestamp
Eoin Campbell picture Eoin Campbell · Jun 30, 2009 · Viewed 304.7k times · Source

We have a batch job that runs every day and copies a file to a pickup folder. I want to also take a copy of that file and drop it into an archive folder with the filename

 yyyy-MM-dd.log

What's the easiest way to do this in a Windows batch job?

I'm basically looking for an equivalent of this Unix command:

cp source.log `date +%F`.log

Answer

opello picture opello · Jun 30, 2009 
CP source.log %DATE:~-4%-%DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%.log

But it's locale dependent. I'm not sure if %DATE% is localized, or depends on the format specified for the short date in Windows.

Here is a locale-independent way to extract the current date from this answer, but it depends on WMIC and FOR /F:

FOR /F %%A IN ('WMIC OS GET LocalDateTime ^| FINDSTR \.') DO @SET B=%%A
CP source.log %B:~0,4%-%B:~4,2%-%B:~6,2%.log

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