XP, CMD, Move file to folder with the files DATE

Question

I want to use a files date to move sort the file. Say I have file test.txt created on 5/10/2011, I want to be able to move the the file to C:\2011\05\10\test.txt.

You ca do something like

I guess my question is simply: How can you put the files date onto the commandline? What should replace 'DATE /t' to get test.txt "created on" date?

EDIT Further research: I can get the date time via dir & find... but it won't work in the batch file...

Answer 1

I did this as a batch file, hence the double % signs. Just make those single if you're doing this from the command line.

for %%f in (*.txt) do (
for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=/ " %%i in ("%%~tf") do (
if not exist "C:\%%k\%%i\%%j" mkdir "C:\%%k\%%i\%%j"
move "%%f" "C:\%%k\%%i\%%j" >NUL
)
)

So the short answer to your question about getting the file's date is to use %~tI in a for statement, where I is the variable used in the for statement. See "help for" for more info on what else is available.

Answer 2

What you need to do is take a FOR command and process the output of a DIR command. You'll probably have to nest two FOR commands to get the individual numbers of the date.

Suggested DIR command to use:

dir c:\ /TC /A-D

Suggested FOR command:

FOR /F " TOKENS=1,5 delims= " %A IN ('dir c:\ /TC /A-D') DO @ECHO A-%A B-%B

---

This should give you mostly what you need in order to get this to work. The problem is that CMD is terrible at this kind of work. While you can do it, I would recommend that you use a more advanced language like powershell. It's free for windows and Quest Software makes a great GUI editor called powerGUI.

Here is what I wrote in Powershell to do this. It's a lot easier for me to follow.

#Get files in C:\temp and filter out directories
$tarfol = "C:\temp" #Target Folder
$var = Get-ChildItem $tarfol | Where-Object {$_.mode -inotmatch "d"} 

#Process Files
foreach($item in $var)
    {
    #Build New Folder Path
    $folder = "$tarfol\$item.CreationTime.Year\$item.CreationTime.Month\$item.CreationTime.Day"

    #Test for for folder
    if(!(Test-Path $folder)) {
        #Create folder
        New-Item -Path C:\temp\$y\$m\$d -ItemType directory
        }
    #Move item
    Move-Item -Path $item.FullName -Destination "$folder"
    }

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

I had to escape the | with a ^.