How to get file's last modified date on Windows command line?

Question

I have been using the following command to get the file date. However, the fileDate variable has been returning blank value ever since we moved to a different s

Answer 1

you can get a files modified date using vbscript too

Set objFS=CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objArgs = WScript.Arguments
strFile= objArgs(0)
WScript.Echo objFS.GetFile(strFile).DateLastModified

save the above as mygetdate.vbs and on command line

c:\test> cscript //nologo mygetdate.vbs myfile

Answer 2

What output (exactly) does dir myfile.txt give in the current directory? What happens if you set the delimiters?

FOR /f "tokens=1,2* delims= " %%a in ('dir myfile.txt^|find /i " myfile.txt"') DO SET fileDate=%%a 

(note the space after delims=)
(to make life easier, you can do this from the command line by replacing %%a with %a)

Answer 3

You could try the 'Last Written' time options associated with the DIR command

/T:C -- Creation Time and Date
/T:A -- Last Access Time and Date
/T:W -- Last Written Time and Date (default)

DIR /T:W myfile.txt

The output from the above command will produce a variety of additional details you probably wont need, so you could incorporate two FINDSTR commands to remove blank lines, plus any references to 'Volume', 'Directory' and 'bytes':

DIR /T:W myfile.txt | FINDSTR /v "^$" | FINDSTR /v /c:"Volume" /c:"Directory" /c:"bytes"

Attempts to incorporate the blank line target (/c:"^$" or "^$") within a single FINDSTR command fail to remove the blank lines (or produce other errors) when the results are output to a text file.

This is a cleaner command:

DIR /T:W myfile.txt | FINDSTR /c:"/"

Answer 4

Change % to %% for use in batch file, for %~ta syntax enter call /?

for %a in (MyFile.txt) do set FileDate=%~ta

Sample output:

for %a in (MyFile.txt) do set FileDate=%~ta
set FileDate=05/05/2020 09:47 AM

for %a in (file_not_exist_file.txt) do set FileDate=%~ta
set FileDate=

Answer 5

To get the last modification date/time of a file in a locale-independent manner you could use the wmic command with the DataFile alias:

wmic DataFile where "Name='D:\\Path\\To\\myfile.txt'" get LastModified /VALUE

Regard that the full path to the file must be provided and that all path separators (backslashes \) must be doubled herein.

This returns a standardised date/time value like this (meaning 12^th of August 2019, 13:00:00, UTC + 120'):

LastModified=20190812130000.000000+120

To capture the date/time value use for /F, then you can assign it to a variable using set:

for /F "delims=" %%I in ('
    wmic DataFile where "Name='D:\\Path\\To\\myfile.txt'" get LastModified /VALUE
') do for /F "tokens=1* delims==" %%J in ("%%I") do set "DateTime=%%K"

The second for /F loop avoids artefacts (like orphaned carriage-return characters) from conversion of the Unicode output of wmic to ASCII/ANSI text by the first for /F loop (see also this answer).

You can then use sub-string expansion to extract the pure date or the time from this:

set "DateOnly=%DateTime:~0,8%"
set "TimeOnly=%DateTime:~8,6%"

To get the creation date/time or the last access date/time, just replace the property LastModified by CreationDate or LastAccessed, respectively. To get information about a directory rather than a file, use the alias FSDir instead of DataFile.

For specifying file (or directory) paths/names containing both , and ), which are usually not accepted by wmic, take a look at this question.

Check out also this post as well as this one about how to get file and directory date/time stamps.

Answer 6

Useful reference to get file properties using a batch file, included is the last modified time:

FOR %%? IN ("C:\somefile\path\file.txt") DO (
    ECHO File Name Only       : %%~n?
    ECHO File Extension       : %%~x?
    ECHO Name in 8.3 notation : %%~sn?
    ECHO File Attributes      : %%~a?
    ECHO Located on Drive     : %%~d?
    ECHO File Size            : %%~z?
    ECHO Last-Modified Date   : %%~t?
    ECHO Drive and Path       : %%~dp?
    ECHO Drive                : %%~d?
    ECHO Fully Qualified Path : %%~f?
    ECHO FQP in 8.3 notation  : %%~sf?
    ECHO Location in the PATH : %%~dp$PATH:?
)