How do I get current date/time on the Windows command line in a suitable format for usage in a file/folder name?

Question

Update: Now that it\'s 2016 I\'d use PowerShell for this unless there\'s a really compelling backwards-compatible reason for it, particularly because of the regional setting

Answer 1

Given a known locality, for reference in functional form. The ECHOTIMESTAMP call shows how to get the timestamp into a variable (DTS in this example.)

@ECHO off

CALL :ECHOTIMESTAMP
GOTO END

:TIMESTAMP
SETLOCAL  EnableDelayedExpansion
    SET DATESTAMP=!DATE:~10,4!-!DATE:~4,2!-!DATE:~7,2!
    SET TIMESTAMP=!TIME:~0,2!-!TIME:~3,2!-!TIME:~6,2!
    SET DTS=!DATESTAMP: =0!-!TIMESTAMP: =0!
ENDLOCAL & SET "%~1=%DTS%"
GOTO :EOF

:ECHOTIMESTAMP
SETLOCAL
    CALL :TIMESTAMP DTS
    ECHO %DTS%
ENDLOCAL
GOTO :EOF

:END

EXIT /b 0

And saved to file, timestamp.bat, here's the output: