How to Create Filename with Date Time in Windows Batch Script

This tutorial will help you to create files and directories with the name of current date time on Windows system. For example, you are writing a script which creates backup regularly, Now you want to organize daily backups with the current date and time name, so it will be easier to identify, which folder containers backups of which date. Go through the tutorial and understand how you can accomplish this.

Get Date & Time in Batch Script

Windows takes the date in the format like Thu 11/02/2017. Now below 3 set of commands extract the date in YYYY format, month in MM format and date in DD format and stored in CUR_YYYY, CUR_MM, and CUR_DD variables correspondingly.

set CUR_YYYY=%date:~10,4%
set CUR_MM=%date:~4,2%
set CUR_DD=%date:~7,2%

Next is to parse the time which is available in 11:20:56.39 (Hours, Minutes, Seconds, and Micro Seconds) format. Now extract the hours, minutes, seconds, and microseconds and store them in variables.

set CUR_HH=%time:~0,2%
if %CUR_HH% lss 10 (set CUR_HH=0%time:~1,1%)

set CUR_NN=%time:~3,2%
set CUR_SS=%time:~6,2%
set CUR_MS=%time:~9,2%

Now, you have variables having current date and time in variables. You can use and create any file name as per your requirements like:

set SUBFILENAME=%CUR_YYYY%%CUR_MM%%CUR_DD%-%CUR_HH%%CUR_NN%%CUR_SS%
mkdir %SUBFILENAME%
echo "Welcome Here!" > access_%SUBFILENAME%.log

If your current date time is Nov 02, 2017 15:41:36, then the above example will create a file in the current directory with name “access_20170306-143822.log”.

A Sample Batch Script with Date & Time

The complete windows batch script will look like below. To test this create a file test.bat with the following content. Save the file and execute the script.

echo off
set CUR_YYYY=%date:~10,4%
set CUR_MM=%date:~4,2%
set CUR_DD=%date:~7,2%
set CUR_HH=%time:~0,2%
if %CUR_HH% lss 10 (set CUR_HH=0%time:~1,1%)

set CUR_NN=%time:~3,2%
set CUR_SS=%time:~6,2%
set CUR_MS=%time:~9,2%

set SUBFILENAME=%CUR_YYYY%%CUR_MM%%CUR_DD%-%CUR_HH%%CUR_NN%%CUR_SS%
mkdir %SUBFILENAME%
echo "Welcome Here!" > access_%SUBFILENAME%.log

You will see a directory is created with name 20171102-154136 and a file create in current directory with name access_20171102-154136.log (Filename will be according to current date and time and will change during your testing)