How to get the datetime in an internationally agnostic way from the windows command-line?

Question

From the windows command line, I need to echo out either the local or utc date and time of the system, but with the parts of the datetime in the order I want, regardless of the current internationalization setting of the pc.

I've seen this related question:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/203090/how-to-get-current-datetime-on-windows-command-line-in-a-suitable-format-for-usi

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hey Scott, try this

echo off
for /F "tokens=1,2*" %%a in ('date /T') do set date=%%a %%b
echo %date%
set strMonth=%date:~0,2%
set strDay=%date:~3,2%
set strYear=%date:~6,4%
set strMonth
set strDay
set strYear

BTW: took some code from here... http://www.computing.net/answers/dos/system-date-to-variable/3874.html

Answer 2

If you don't mind using a little VBScript you can use something like this:

' http://classicasp.aspfaq.com/date-time-routines-manipulation/can-i-make-vbscript-format-dates-for-me.html
' Use MSSTDFMT to mimic VB's Format() function. Provides more flexibility in
' formatting dates than the VBScript FormatDateTime() function.
On Error Resume Next
    dim fmt
    dim rs

    set fmt = WScript.CreateObject("MSSTDFMT.StdDataFormat") 
    set rs = WScript.CreateObject("ADODB.Recordset") 

    rs.Fields.Append "fldExpression", 12 ' adVariant 
    rs.Open 
    rs.AddNew 


    fmt.Format = WScript.Arguments(0)

    rs("fldExpression").DataFormat = fmt 
    rs("fldExpression").Value = Now() 

    WScript.Echo rs("fldExpression").Value 

    rs.close
    set fmt = nothing
    set rs = nothing

    WScript.Quit(0)

I put this in a file called formatDate.vbs. You can then call from the command line, passing in the format you want:

C:>cscript //nologo formatDate.vbs "mm-dd-yyyy" 
04-02-2009 
C:>cscript //nologo formatDate.vbs "dd-mm-yyyy"
02-04-2009 
C:>cscript //nologo formatDate.vbs "dd-MMM-yy" 
02-Apr-09
C:>cscript //nologo formatDate.vbs "mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm"
04/02/2009 10:10
C:>cscript //nologo formatDate.vbs "dddddd ttttt"
Friday, April 03, 2009 6:48:57 AM
C:>cscript //nologo formatDate.vbs "General Date"
4/3/2009 6:49:53 AM

See Predefined Date/Time Formats and User-Defined Date/Time Formats in the MSDN for a complete list of formats you can use.

NOTE: The MSSTDFMT object depends on the availability of MSSTDFMT.dll, which is installed by Visual Studio 6.0.

The MSSTDFMT.dll appears to be available on Windows XP and Windows 2003 servers; I checked a few machines that have never had MS Visual Studio installed and the DLL was present.

Answer 3

Put the following in a file called something like "GetLocalTime.vbs".

Function Pad( strText, intLen )
    Pad = Right( String( intLen, "0" ) & strText, intLen )
End Function

Dim d
d = Now
wscript.echo Pad(Year(d),4) & "-" & Pad(Month(d),2) & "-" & Pad(Day(d),2) & "T" & Pad(Hour(d),2) & ":" & Pad(Minute(d),2) & ":" & Pad(Second(d),2)

Run with:

cscript GetLocalTime.vbs //Nologo

This outputs:

2009-04-02 14:22

And can be adapted to write out the date-time parts in any order.

Answer 4

I use a small variation of the GetDate.cmd script to get only the date:

@SETLOCAL
@ECHO OFF
GOTO :begin
:fixdate
IF "%1:~0,1%" GTR "9" SHIFT
FOR /f "skip=1 tokens=2-4 delims=(-)" %%g IN ('echo.^|date') DO (SET %%g=%1& SET %%h=%2& SET %%i=%3)
GOTO :eof
:begin
FOR /f "tokens=1-4 delims=/-. " %%g IN ('date /t') DO (CALL :fixdate %%g %%h %%i %%j)
ECHO %aa%%yy%%mm%%dd%
ENDLOCAL

It takes advantage of the format output by date and deals with the case when date /t prints the weekday name before the year/month/day information. The original script, however, doesn't behave correctly when the format strings aren't yy, mm and dd. I've added a workaround which makes the script work for both English and Portuguese systems: in Portuguese the year format is aa; so the statement %aa%%yy% will print the year at %aa% and blank at %yy%, but the opposite happens on English systems.

There are, however, safer techniques which involve parsing the date format from the Registry.