Split %date% in a batch file regardless of Regional Settings

Question

Is there a way to split the %date% in a batch file (say, in 3 environment variables), but regardless of Regional Settings? Today's date would be 3/13/2013 for US, but with my Regional Settings it is 13.3.2013 - the delimiter is changed and the order as well.

Answer 1

You can do it using wmic (but WMIC isn't included with XP Home):

@ECHO OFF
:: Check WMIC is available
WMIC.EXE Alias /? >NUL 2>&1 || GOTO s_error

:: Use WMIC to retrieve date and time
FOR /F "skip=1 tokens=1-6" %%G IN ('WMIC Path Win32_LocalTime Get Day^,Hour^,Minute^,Month^,Second^,Year /Format:table') DO (
   IF "%%~L"=="" goto s_done
      Set _yyyy=%%L
      Set _mm=00%%J
      Set _dd=00%%G
      Set _hour=00%%H
      SET _minute=00%%I
)
:s_done

:: Pad digits with leading zeros
      Set _mm=%_mm:~-2%
      Set _dd=%_dd:~-2%
      Set _hour=%_hour:~-2%
      Set _minute=%_minute:~-2%

:: Display the date/time in ISO 8601 format:
Set _isodate=%_yyyy%-%_mm%-%_dd% %_hour%:%_minute%
Echo %_isodate%

GOTO:EOF

:s_error
Echo GetDate.cmd
Echo Displays date and time independent of OS Locale, Language or date format.
Echo Requires Windows XP Professional, Vista or Windows 7
Echo.
Echo Returns 6 environment variables containing isodate,Year,Month,Day,hour and minute.

And you can do it by parsing the date command to lookup what the current date format is required to be.

The first link indicates you might need to edit the code in the second, on Win7, to handle a few extra wrinkles around short date/long date form.