asked on 1/8/2013

Script to create directory named with today's date and time

I'm looking to set up a script to copy some files, i was just going to run a simple batch file that runs robocopy. I wish the script to create a directory with the current date and time before it copies the files.

I've done a bit of googling and have come across the following however it doesn't seem to work

FOR /F “TOKENS=1,2 DELIMS=/ ” %%A IN (‘DATE /T’) DO SET mm=%%B
FOR /F “TOKENS=2,3 DELIMS=/ ” %%A IN (‘DATE /T’) DO SET dd=%%B
FOR /F “TOKENS=3* DELIMS=/ ” %%A IN (‘DATE /T’) DO SET yyyy=%%B

set /A dd=%dd%

set Pdate=%yyyy%_%mm%_%dd%
echo %Pdate%

mkdir C:MYFILE_”%PDATE%

It just gives the error: 1* was unexpected at this time

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Windows Batch

Last Comment

afflik1923

1/8/2013

Amit

1/8/2013

check this
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/574777/creating-folder-using-bat-file

afflik1923

1/8/2013

ASKER

ok so i tried the following:

for /F "tokens=1-4 delims=. " %%i in ('date /t') do (
set Day=%%i
set Month=%%j
set Year=%%k
)

for /F "tokens=1-4 delims=: " %%i in ('time /t') do (
set Hour=%%i
set Minute=%%j
set Second=%%k
)

set date = %Year%%Month%%Day%

n:
md "%1\%Year%%Month%%Day%"

However the date comes out as 08/01/2013 which creates sub folders of "08" and "01" and "2013" rather than "08012013"

Amit

1/8/2013

You need to change the regional setting. As date and time format is picked up from regional setting of OS.

oBdA

1/8/2013

You'd need to
1. use "/ " instead of ". " as delimiters for the date output,
2. rearrange the tokens in the date for loop in all likelihood,
3. stop using spaces around the equal sign when assigning variables,
4. avoid overwriting predefined variables ("date")
to correct your script.
Or you could avoid all those nasty problems with localization and regional settings by using WMI to query for the date and time. It's a bit more complicated, but does not rely on specific date and time settings and works from Windows 2000 until at least Windows 7/W2k8R2:

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set /a Line=0
for /f "tokens=1-9" %%a in ('wmic Path Win32_LocalTime Get Day^,DayOfWeek^,Hour^,Minute^,Month^,Quarter^,Second^,WeekInMonth^,Year ^| find /v ""') do (
REM for /f "skip=1 tokens=2-10 delims=," %%a in ('wmic.exe Path Win32_LocalTime Get Day^,DayOfWeek^,Hour^,Minute^,Month^,Quarter^,Second^,WeekInMonth^,Year /format:csv') do (
  set /a Line += 1
  if "!Line!"=="1" (set VarA=%%a&set VarB=%%b&set VarC=%%c&set VarD=%%d&set VarE=%%e&set VarF=%%f&set VarG=%%g&set VarH=%%h&set VarI=%%i)
  if "!Line!"=="2" (set !VarA!=%%a&set !VarB!=%%b&set !VarC!=%%c&set !VarD!=%%d&set !VarE!=%%e&set !VarF!=%%f&set !VarG!=%%g&set !VarH!=%%h&set !VarI!=%%i)
)
for %%a in (Month Day Hour Minute Second) do (if !%%a! LSS 10 set %%a=0!%%a!)
REM *** At this point, the variables Day, DayOfWeek, Hour, Minute, Month, Quarter, Second, WeekInMonth, and Year are set.
REM *** Month, Day, Hour, Minute, Second have leading zeroes if less than 10.
set TimeStamp=%Year%%Month%%Day%
echo Time stamp: %TimeStamp%
n:
md "%1\%TimeStamp%"