Batch: Timestamp to UNIX Time

Question

For all I know, Batch does not have a command that gives the UNIX time. The closest one I can find is %time%, which only displays the timestamp.

Is there a command, or set of commands in Batch with which you can get the UNIX time?

Answer 1

There's Richie Lawrence's batch library that has all those nifty handy scripts. The one you need is DateToSec (which uses GetDate and GetTime).

Here's a simplified script, that employs a little WMI:

@echo off
setlocal
call :GetUnixTime UNIX_TIME
echo %UNIX_TIME% seconds have elapsed since 1970-01-01 00:00:00
goto :EOF

:GetUnixTime
setlocal enableextensions
for /f %%x in ('wmic path win32_utctime get /format:list ^| findstr "="') do (
    set %%x)
set /a z=(14-100%Month%%%100)/12, y=10000%Year%%%10000-z
set /a ut=y*365+y/4-y/100+y/400+(153*(100%Month%%%100+12*z-3)+2)/5+Day-719469
set /a ut=ut*86400+100%Hour%%%100*3600+100%Minute%%%100*60+100%Second%%%100
endlocal & set "%1=%ut%" & goto :EOF

The result will be returned into the first parameter passed to GetUnixTime, i.e. %UNIX_TIME%.
For example:

1341791426 seconds have elapsed since 1970-01-01 00:00:00

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

By far best solution is to download a freestanding date.exe unix-port.

Recommend that you rename it to unixdate.exe, to avoid conflict with MS Date command.

Get it from here

1. download & unzip. As far as I know, all the utilities are 'portable', that is, they don't require any installation program for them to work. I've only used a few (rm.exe & date.exe). Also, you can ReName the exe's in case they might match other system utils you already have
2. Find the actual executable ports in the subfolder (usr\local\wbin)
3. To get HELP info type the command followed with --help (must spell help in lowercase)

Example:

((PROMPT)):unixdate +%Y%M%d
20141704

((PROMPT)):unixdate +%Y%b%d
2014Sep04

Answer 3

What about simple 1-line long C program returning UNIX timestamp? You can retrieve value from %errorlevel% in batch script.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

int main(void)
{
    return (int) time(NULL);
}

In my test in command prompt it worked:

C:\Users\dabaran\Desktop\cs50\src\C>.\time || echo %errorlevel% && set mytstamp=%errorlevel%
1419609373

C:\Users\dabaran\Desktop\cs50\src\C>echo %mytstamp%
1419609373

Answer 4

There is no batch command for returning UNIX time. Your only options would be to write a program which could be run from a batch file that would return the UNIX time, or you could use the Windows PowerShell.

Answer 5

create a .bat file called "getUtime.bat"

@echo off
echo WScript.Echo(new Date().getTime()); > %temp%\time.js
cscript //nologo %temp%\time.js
del %temp%\time.js

and call like this

"C:\>getUTime"
1430894237616