Windows command date command

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This post explains how to get current date and time from command prompt or in a batch file.

How to get date and time in a batch file

The following sample batch script gets current date and time
Datetime.cmd

@echo off

for /F "tokens=2" %%i in ('date /t') do set mydate=%%i
set mytime=%time%
echo Current time is %mydate%:%mytime%

When we run the above batch file

C:\>datetime.cmd
Current time is 08/12/2015:22:57:24.62
C:\>

Get date from command line

How to Change Date and Time in Windows 10

To print today’s date on the command prompt, we can run date /t.

c:\>date /t
Thu 05/14/2015
c:\>

Just running date without any arguments prints the current date and then prompts to enter a new date if the user wants to reset it.

c:\>date
The current date is: Sat 05/16/2015
Enter the new date: (mm-dd-yy)
c:\>

In addition to date command, we also have an environment variable using which we can find today’s date.

c:\>echo %date%
Sun 05/17/2015

How to get only the date in MM/DD/YYYY format?

Moreover, you may want to exclude the day (like ‘Sun’ in the above example) and print only the date in MM/DD/YYYY format. The below command works for the same.

for /F "tokens=2" %i in ('date /t') do echo %i

Example:

c:\>for /F "tokens=2" %i in ('date /t') do echo %i
05/14/2015
c:\>
Current date and time using WMIC | MiViLiSNet

Get time from command prompt

Similar to date command, we have the command time which lets us find the current system time. Some examples below.

c:\>time /t
11:17 PM

c:\>time
The current time is: 23:17:18.57
Enter the new time:
c:\>

As you can see, the command prints the time in different formats. It prints in 12 hour format when /t is added and in 24 hours format without /t

We can also get the current time from environment variables.

c:\>echo %time%
23:23:51.62
c:\> 

Get date and time

c:\>echo %date%-%time% Sun 05/17/2015-23:21:03.34

To print today’s date on the command prompt, we can run date /t . Just running date without any arguments prints the current date and then prompts to enter a new date if the user wants to reset it.