In my .bat file I want to generate a unique name for files/directories based on date-time.
e.g.
Build-2009-10-29-10-59-00
The problem is that %TIME% won't do because it contains characters that are illegal in filename (e.g. ':').
Is there something like 'tr' in batch files?
Any other ideas how to solve this (that don't require extra command line utilities aside from the batch interpreter)?
You can simply replace the offending character with an empty string:
echo %time::=%
The syntax %var:str1=str2% takes the environment variable (or pseudo-variable in case of %TIME% and replaces str1 by str2. If nothing follows after the equals sign then str1 is simply deleted.
In your specific case I think you'd want the following:
rem cut off fractional seconds
set t=%time:~0,8%
rem replace colons with dashes
set t=%t::=-%
set FileName=Build-%date%-%t%
A more brute-force way in case you don't know whether colons are used (but the order of the time would be the same):
set FileName=Build-%date%-%time:~0,2%-%time:~3,2%-%time:~6,2%
All preceding things, however, assume that you use standard ISO 8601 date format, i. e. 2009-10-29. I'd assume this as simply normal, but some people use other formats so be careful. But since you didn't ask about the date I was assuming you didn't have a problem there.