How to append a date in batch files

Question

I have the following line in a batch file (that runs on an old Windows 2000 box):

7z a QuickBackup.zip *.backup

How do I append the date to

Answer 1

If you have WSL enabled (Windows 10 only) you can do it with bash in a locale neutral way.

set dateFile=%TEMP%\currentDate.txt
bash -c "date +%Y%m%d" > %dateFile%
set /p today=<%dateFile%

Feel free to replace the file redirection with a "for" loop abomination suggested in other answers here and over at Windows batch assign output of a program to a variable