Print datetime in Windows cmd

Question

In Linux I do date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S" to print a date and time label. How do I get the same in Windows?

I found that date /t returns 25/02/2016. But I would like to have it formatted like 20160225155958.

Answer 1

It can be done, but it's not as neat and tidy as that:

echo %date:~-4%%date:~3,2%%date:~0,2%%time:~0,2%%time:~3,2%%time:~6,2%

This for me returns:

Note this is locale specific, and it's a bit of a hack around really. It's simply a concatenation of:

• Last 4 chars of DATE
• Mid of Date, 2 chars starting from char 3
• Mid of Date, 2 chars starting from char 0
• Mid of Time, 2 chars starting from char 0
• Mid of Time, 2 chars starting from char 3
• Mid of Time, 2 chars starting from char 6

Answer 2

I would like to have it formatted like 20160225155958

which is the output format of running:

date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S"

on Linux.

Using %date% to provide a solution is, as pointed out in another answer, dependent on the OS Locale, Regional, and Language settings.

Using wmic, on the other hand, works independently of OS Locale, Language or the user's chosen date format (Control Panel/Regional).

The following batch file uses wmic to retrieve the date and (local) time in the OP's specified format, so doesn't suffer the disadvantage of a solution using %date%.

getdate.cmd:

@echo off
setlocal
rem use findstr to strip blank lines from wmic output
for /f "usebackq skip=1 tokens=1-6" %%g in (`wmic Path Win32_LocalTime Get Day^,Hour^,Minute^,Month^,Second^,Year ^| findstr /r /v "^$"`) do (
  set _day=00%%g
  set _hours=00%%h
  set _minutes=00%%i
  set _month=00%%j
  set _seconds=00%%k
  set _year=%%l
  )
rem pad with leading zeros
set _month=%_month:~-2%
set _day=%_day:~-2%
set _hh=%_hours:~-2%
set _mm=%_minutes:~-2%
set _ss=%_seconds:~-2%
set _date=%_year%%_month%%_day%%_hh%%_mm%%_ss%
echo %_date%
endlocal

The above batch file is a modified version of the example in getdate

Output:

F:\test>date /t && time /t
25/02/2016
16:49

F:\test>getdate
20160225164929
F:\test>

Cywin for comparison:

DavidPostill@Hal /f/test
$ date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S"
20160225164938

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Further Reading

• An A-Z Index of the Windows CMD command line - An excellent reference for all things Windows cmd line related.
• for /f - Loop command against the results of another command.
• getdate - Display the date and time independent of OS Locale, Language or the users chosen date format (Control Panel/Regional).
• variables - Extract part of a variable (substring).
• wmic - Windows Management Instrumentation Command.