Append TimeStamp to a File Name

Question

I have come across this problem several times in which I would like to have multiple versions of the same file in the same directory. The way I have been doing it using C# i

Answer 1

For Current date and time as the name for a file on the file system. Now call the string.Format method, and combine it with DateTime.Now, for a method that outputs the correct string based on the date and time.

using System;
using System.IO;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        //
        // Write file containing the date with BIN extension
        //
        string n = string.Format("text-{0:yyyy-MM-dd_hh-mm-ss-tt}.bin",
            DateTime.Now);
        File.WriteAllText(n, "abc");
    }
}

Output :

C:\Users\Fez\Documents\text-2020-01-08_05-23-13-PM.bin

"text-{0:yyyy-MM-dd_hh-mm-ss-tt}.bin"

text- The first part of the output required Files will all start with text-

{0: Indicates that this is a string placeholder The zero indicates the index of the parameters inserted here

yyyy- Prints the year in four digits followed by a dash This has a "year 10000" problem

MM- Prints the month in two digits

dd_ Prints the day in two digits followed by an underscore

hh- Prints the hour in two digits

mm- Prints the minute, also in two digits

ss- As expected, it prints the seconds

tt Prints AM or PM depending on the time of day

Answer 2

Perhaps appending DateTime.Now.Ticks instead, is a tiny bit faster since you won't be creating 3 strings and the ticks value will always be unique also.

Answer 3

You can use below instead:

DateTime.Now.Ticks

Answer 4

You can use DateTime.ToString Method (String)

DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddHHmmssfff")

or string.Format

string.Format("{0:yyyy-MM-dd_HH-mm-ss-fff}", DateTime.Now);

or Interpolated Strings

$"{DateTime.Now:yyyy-MM-dd_HH-mm-ss-fff}"

There are following custom format specifiers y (year), M (month), d (day), h (hour 12), H (hour 24), m (minute), s (second), f (second fraction), F (second fraction, trailing zeroes are trimmed), t (P.M or A.M) and z (time zone).

With Extension Method

Usage:

string result = "myfile.txt".AppendTimeStamp();
//myfile20130604234625642.txt

Extension method

public static class MyExtensions
{
    public static string AppendTimeStamp(this string fileName)
    {
        return string.Concat(
            Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fileName),
            DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddHHmmssfff"),
            Path.GetExtension(fileName)
            );
    }
}

Answer 5

you can use:

Stopwatch.GetTimestamp();

Answer 6

I prefer to use:

string result = "myFile_" + DateTime.Now.ToFileTime() + ".txt";

What does ToFileTime() do?

Converts the value of the current DateTime object to a Windows file time.

public long ToFileTime()

A Windows file time is a 64-bit value that represents the number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since 12:00 midnight, January 1, 1601 A.D. (C.E.) Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Windows uses a file time to record when an application creates, accesses, or writes to a file.

Source: MSDN documentation - DateTime.ToFileTime Method