How do I get the day month and year from a Windows cmd.exe script?

Question

How do I get the current day month and year from inside a Windows cmd script? I need to get each value into a separate variable.

Answer 1

For one line!

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Try using for wmic OS Get localdatetime^|find "." in for /f without tokens and/or delims, this works in any language / region and also, no user settings interfere with the layout of the output.

• In command line:

for /f %i in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime^|find "."')do @cmd/v/c "set _date=%i &echo= year: !_date:~0,4!&&echo=month:   !_date:~4,2!&echo=  day:   !_date:~6,2!"

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• In bat/cmd file:

for /f %%i in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime^|find "."')do @cmd/v/c "set _date=%%i &echo= year: !_date:~0,4!&&echo=month:   !_date:~4,2!&echo=  day:   !_date:~6,2!"

Results:

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 year: 2019
month:   06
  day:   12

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• With Hour and Minute in bat/cmd file:

for /f %%i in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime^|find "."')do @cmd/v/c "set _date=%%i &echo=  year: !_date:~0,4!&&echo= month:   !_date:~4,2!&echo=   day:   !_date:~6,2!&echo=  hour:   !_date:~8,2!&echo=minute:   !_date:~10,2!"

---

• With Hour and Minute in command line:

for /f %i in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime^|find "."')do @cmd/v/c "set _date=%i &echo=  year: !_date:~0,4!&&echo= month:   !_date:~4,2!&echo=   day:   !_date:~6,2!&echo=  hour:   !_date:~8,2!&echo=minute:   !_date:~10,2!"

---

Results:

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  year: 2020
 month:   05
   day:   16
  hour:   00
minute:   46

Answer 2

To get the year, month, and day you can use the %date% environment variable and the :~ operator. %date% expands to something like Thu 08/12/2010 and :~ allows you to pick up specific characters out of a variable:

set year=%date:~10,4%
set month=%date:~4,2%
set day=%date:~7,2%
set filename=%year%_%month%_%day%

Use %time% in similar fashion to get what you need from the current time.

set /? will give you more information on using special operators with variables.

Answer 3

echo %Date:~7,2% gets current day

7 is starting position 2 number of digits to display

echo %Date:~7,2% gets current day

echo %Date:~4,2% gets current month

echo %Date:~10,4% gets current year

Answer 4

The following batch code returns the components of the current date in a locale-independent manner and stores day, month and year in the variables CurrDay, CurrMonth and CurrYear, respectively:

for /F "skip=1 delims=" %%F in ('
    wmic PATH Win32_LocalTime GET Day^,Month^,Year /FORMAT:TABLE
') do (
    for /F "tokens=1-3" %%L in ("%%F") do (
        set CurrDay=0%%L
        set CurrMonth=0%%M
        set CurrYear=%%N
    )
)
set CurrDay=%CurrDay:~-2%
set CurrMonth=%CurrMonth:~-2%
echo Current day  :  %CurrDay%
echo Current month:  %CurrMonth%
echo Current year :%CurrYear%

There are two nested for /F loops to work around an issue with the wmic command, whose output is in unicode format; using a single loop results in additional carriage-return characters which impacts proper variable expansion.

Since day and month may also consist of a single digit only, I prepended a leading zero 0 in the loop construct. Afterwards, the values are trimmed to always consist of two digits.

Answer 5

A variant of script that works locale-independently. Put it in a text file with .cmd extension and run.

::: Begin set date

for /f "tokens=1-4 delims=/-. " %%i in ('date /t') do (call :set_date %%i %%j %%k %%l)
goto :end_set_date

:set_date
if "%1:~0,1%" gtr "9" shift
for /f "skip=1 tokens=2-4 delims=(-)" %%m in ('echo,^|date') do (set %%m=%1&set %%n=%2&set %%o=%3)
goto :eof

:end_set_date
::: End set date

echo day in 'DD' format is %dd%; month in 'MM' format is %mm%; year in 'YYYY' format is %yy%

The variables %dd%, %mm% and %yy% will keep the day('DD' format), the month('MM' format) and the year('YYYY' format) respectively.

Answer 6

This variant works for all localizations:

@echo off
FOR /F "skip=1 tokens=1-6" %%A IN ('WMIC Path Win32_LocalTime Get Day^,Hour^,Minute^,Month^,Second^,Year /Format:table') DO (
    if "%%B" NEQ "" (
        SET /A FDATE=%%F*10000+%%D*100+%%A
    )
)
@echo on
echo date=%FDATE%
echo year=%FDATE:~2,2%
echo month=%FDATE:~4,2%