I'm looking for a way in a batch file to rename a generic file (i.e. RECORDSWK.TXT) with yesterday's date (i.e. yyyymmddWK.TXT). The files are created each Sunday morning and contain the previous week's records, so that on June 4, 2006, the RECORDSWK.TXT file contains the records for the week ending June 3 and needs to be named 20060603WK.TXT. On the first day of the month, another file is created that contains all of the previous month's records. On June 1, 2006, the file RECORDSMO.TXT needs to be renamed 200605MO.TXT. I need to take the current date, decrement by one day, then take only the year, month and day or only the year and month of that date to create the new file name. Is there a way to do this in a batch file in XP? Thanks for any help you can provide.

Not a batch file, but this uses the FREE scripting language AutoIt v3: ;This first AutoIt script http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/ could be compiled ; and set to run every Sunday using XP's "Scheduled Tasks" in the Control Panel ;Rename RECORDSWK.TXT as per message 152153 #include <Date.au3> FileChangeDir("C:\path\where\the\files\are") $today = @Year & "/" & @Mon & "/" & @Mday $yesterday = _DateAdd("D", -1, $today) $yesterday = StringReplace($yesterday, "/", "") ;remove slashes FileMove("RECORDSWK.TXT", $yesterday & "WK.TXT") Exit ;This second AutoIt script http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/ could be compiled ; and set to run first day of each month using XP's "Scheduled Tasks" in the Control Panel ;Rename RECORDSMO.TXT as per message 152153 #include <Date.au3> FileChangeDir("C:\path\where\the\files\are") $today = @Year & "/" & @Mon & "/" & @Mday $yesterday = _DateAdd("D", -1, $today) $year = StringLeft($yesterday, 4) $month = StringMid($yesterday, 6, 2) FileMove("RECORDSMO.TXT", $year & month & "MO.TXT") Exit

I appreciate the time you spent working that out. I'm hoping to avoid any third party products, however, for several reasons. For one, it means having the utility available on any machine where my routine is run. For another (quoting from the AutoIt web site): "AutoIt v3 has a completely different syntax to AutoIt2 so old scripts are not compatible." I don't want to be forced to rebuild everything with each new version of AutoIt or Windows. I've actually inched closer to the solution this morning. I've discovered how to parse out the day, month, year and date from DATE and I now know how to subtract 1 from most of those values. Unfortunately, 06-1=5, not 05. Thanks for your effort. I'm just not ready to abandon the internal batch possibilities yet.

VBScript would probably work just as well, but AutoIt is easier in my opinion. Just to clarify: - AutoIt does not need to be installed on every machine because the script can be compiled into a stand-alone EXE. - The current syntax is not chaning anytime soon; and it doesn't matter because no one will force you to upgrade. Old scripts will still work. (Some people still actively use v2.) Whatever you decide, just be careful with RECORDSWK.TXT when yesterday's date falls on the previous month.

Hi NOTS, Since you've gotten as far as the "5 not 05" snag, I guess you're ready to experience the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. The programming forum here is shot through with 'date math' issues. Very few end happily. I'll show you shortly how to work the problem of the leading 0 in a 2 place MM or DD. But before we get there and keeping always in mind the 'version frolics'... Parsing the DATE is, in itself, a crapshoot. Even ignoring languanges, the DATE layout will vary according to winders version, regional settings, CMD/COMMAND and other variables. So far the only really promising approaches would seeem to be the 'Julian date', for which see posts by user dtech10 in programming forum; or a brute force lookup table: if %TODAY%==20060607 set yesterday=20060606 ... ad nauseum The batch nelow uses SYSTEM [ie BIOS] date, so it's not version/regional dependent. Note, however, that it requires XP/2K or maybe NT4. It will NOT work in DOS. ::== YMD6.bat :: get sys YMD into vars @echo off :: YYYY getter > syyyy.d echo a 100 >> syyyy.d echo mov ah,2a >> syyyy.d echo int 21 >> syyyy.d echo. >> syyyy.d echo p=100 2 >> syyyy.d echo n sizeYYYY >> syyyy.d echo w >> syyyy.d echo q debug < syyyy.d > nul :: OK :: MM getter > sMM.d echo a 100 >> sMM.d echo mov ah,2a >> sMM.d echo int 21 >> sMM.d echo mov cx,0 >> sMM.d echo mov cl,dh >> sMM.d echo. >> sMM.d echo p=100 4 >> sMM.d echo n sizeMM >> sMM.d echo w >> sMM.d echo q debug < sMM.d > nul :: OK :: DD getter > sDD.d echo a 100 >> sDD.d echo mov ah,2a >> sDD.d echo int 21 >> sDD.d echo mov cx,0 >> sDD.d echo mov cl,dl >> sDD.d echo. >> sDD.d echo p=100 4 >> sDD.d echo n sizeDD >> sDD.d echo w >> sDD.d echo q debug < sDD.d > nul :: OK del *.d for %%F in (sizeYYYY sizeMM sizeDD) do call :sub1 %%F set /p YYYY=<sizeYYYY.# set /p MM=<sizeMM.# if %MM% LSS 10 set MM=0%MM% set /p DD=<sizeDD.# if %DD% LSS 10 set DD=0%DD% del size*.* echo YYYYMMDD=%YYYY%%MM%%DD% goto :eof :sub1 > %1.# echo %~z1 goto :eof :: DONE If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Hmmm. This is what I eventually came up with: for /f "tokens=1-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set todaydow=%%a& set todaymonth=%%b& set todayday=%%c& set todayyear=%%d) set yesterdayyear=%todayyear% set /a yesterdaymonth=todaymonth set /a yesterdayday=todayday-1 if %yesterdayday% lss 10 set yesterdayday=0%yesterdayday% if %yesterdayday%==00 set /a yesterdaymonth=todaymonth-1 if %yesterdaymonth% lss 10 set yesterdaymonth=0%yesterdaymonth% if %yesterdaymonth%==00 set /a yesterdayyear=todayyear-1 if %yesterdaymonth%==00 set /A yesterdaymonth=12 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==02 set yesterdayday=28 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==04 set yesterdayday=30 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==06 set yesterdayday=30 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==09 set yesterdayday=30 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==11 set yesterdayday=30 if %yesterdayday%==00 set yesterdayday=31 It ain't purty but I think it works. From there, it's easy to put together yesterday's file name: %yesterdayyear%%yesterdaymonth%%yesterdayday%.txt Or last month's file name: %yesterdayyear%%yesterdaymonth%.txt I THINK the only problem is that if today is March 1 of a leap year, I'd set yesterday's date to 02/28/yy when it really should be 02/29/yy. For my purposes, the only time that comes into play is if today is also a Sunday. Only then do I care what yesterday's DAY was because I'd want to name last week's file with yesterday's (the end of last week) date. So once every 28 years or so I'd have a file with a date that's one day off of accurate. Of course, if I checked for leap years, I could fix that, too. I'm not too concerned about lamguage or regional differences since I know where this will be used, but versions could be a problem. Is there any way to put the system date into an environment variable and parse from there? Thanks for your help. Ray

M2, This fixes the leap year problem. The next time March 1 falls on a Sunday in a leap year is in 2020 (I'll hopefully be retired). But this will now work regardless of the day of the week. The day before the 1st of March in a leap year is now February 29. for /f "tokens=1-4 delims=/ " %%a in ('date /t') do (set todaydow=%%a& set todaymonth=%%b& set todayday=%%c& set todayyear=%%d) set /a leapyeartest=todayyear/4*4 set yesterdayyear=%todayyear% set /a yesterdaymonth=todaymonth set /a yesterdayday=todayday-1 if %yesterdayday% lss 10 set yesterdayday=0%yesterdayday% if %yesterdayday%==00 set /a yesterdaymonth=todaymonth-1 if %yesterdaymonth% lss 10 set yesterdaymonth=0%yesterdaymonth% if %yesterdaymonth%==00 set /a yesterdayyear=todayyear-1 if %yesterdaymonth%==00 set /A yesterdaymonth=12 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==02 if %yesterdayyear%==%leapyeartest% set yesterdayday=29 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==02 if not %yesterdayyear%==%leapyeartest% set yesterdayday=28 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==04 set yesterdayday=30 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==06 set yesterdayday=30 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==09 set yesterdayday=30 if %yesterdayday%==00 if %yesterdaymonth%==11 set yesterdayday=30 if %yesterdayday%==00 set yesterdayday=31 Ray