how to get yesterday's date in a batch file

Question

I know how to get today\'s date in Windows 7. here is the command that I am using:

%DATE:~6,4%%DATE:~3,2%%DATE:~0,2%

But I want to get yes

Answer 1

Here's a solution that creates the earlierday.vbs file on the fly, uses it and deletes it afterwards.

It stores the result in the NewDate variable

This example calculates 1 day ago, but can easily calculate a date further back by changing the value of the Offset variable.

@echo off
set Offset=1

echo d = date() - WScript.Arguments.Item(0) > earlierday.vbs
echo wscript.echo year(d) * 10000 + month(d) * 100 + day(d) >> earlierday.vbs

for /f %%a in ('cscript //nologo earlierday.vbs %Offset%') do set NewDate=%%a

del earlierday.vbs    
echo %NewDate%
pause

You could refine this slightly by using %temp%\earlierday.vbs to create the file in the user's temp folder.

Credits to paxdiablo as this is a simple tweak on his earlier post.

EDIT: Here's something with a loop, close to what I actually need it to do. This will take 14 days off today's date and return that date. Then it will keep going back 7 days at a time until it gets to 35 days day ago.

@echo off
SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion

set BackDaysFrom=14
Set BackDaysTo=35
Set BackDaysStep=7

echo d = date() - WScript.Arguments.Item(0) > earlierday.vbs
echo wscript.echo year(d) * 10000 + month(d) * 100 + day(d) >> earlierday.vbs

for /L %%i in (%BackDaysFrom%, %BackDaysStep%, %BackDaysTo%) do (
    for /f %%a in ('cscript //nologo earlierday.vbs %%i') do set NewDate=%%a
    echo !NewDate!
)

del earlierday.vbs    

pause