This is a part of an on-going blog series written by Adam Gordon. Each week, Adam will walk you through a PowerShell command, showing you when and how to use each one. This week, Adam covers Get-Date.

When to use Get-Date

The Get-Date cmdlet gets a DateTime object that represents the current date or a date that you specify.

Get-Date can format the date and time in several .NET and UNIX formats.

You can use Get-Date to generate a date or time character string, and then send the string to other cmdlets or programs.

Get-Date uses the computer’s culture settings to determine how the output is formatted. To view your computer’s settings, use (Get-Culture).DateTimeFormat

 

How to use Get-Date

Get the current date and time:

Get-Date

Get-Date displays the current system date and time. The output is in the long date and long-time formats.

 

Get elements of the current date and time:

Get-Date -DisplayHint Date

Use Get-Date to get either the date or time element. The -DisplayHint parameter uses the arguments Date, Time, or DateTime.

 

Get the date and time with a .NET format specifier:

Get-Date -Format “dddd MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm K”

Get-Date uses the –Format parameter to specify several .NET format specifiers. The output is a String object.

The .NET format specifiers used in this example are defined as follows:

Specifier	Definition
dddd	Day of the week – full name
MM	Month number
dd	Day of the month – 2 digits
yyyy	Year in 4-digit format
HH:mm	Time in 24-hour format -no seconds
K	Time zone offset from Universal Time Coordinate (UTC)

Click here for more information about .NET format specifiers.

 

Get the date and time with a UFormat specifier:

Get-Date -UFormat “%A %m/%d/%Y %R %Z” 

Get-Date uses the –UFormat parameter to specify several format specifiers. The output is a String object.

The UFormat format specifiers used in this example are defined as follows:

Specifier	Definition
%A	Day of the week – full name
%m	Month number
%d	Day of the month – 2 digits
%Y	Year in 4-digit format
%R	Time in 24-hour format -no seconds
%Z	Time zone offset from Universal Time Coordinate (UTC)

 

Get a date’s day of the year:

(Get-Date -Year 2020 -Month 12 -Day 31).DayOfYear

Get-Date uses three parameters to specify the date: Year, Month, and Day. The command is wrapped with parentheses so that the result is evaluated by the DayofYear property.

NOTE: The Gregorian calendar has 365 days, except for leap years that have 366 days. December 31, 2020 is day 366.

 

Check if a date is adjusted for daylight savings time:

$DST = Get-Date
$DST.IsDaylightSavingTime()

This example uses a boolean method to verify if a date is adjusted by daylight savings time. A variable, $DST stores the result of Get-Date.

$DST uses the IsDaylightSavingTime method to test if the date is adjusted for daylight savings time.

 

Convert the current time to UTC time:

Get-Date -UFormat “%A %B/%d/%Y %T %Z”
$Time = Get-Date
$Time.ToUniversalTime()

In this example, the current time is converted to UTC time. The UTC offset for the system’s locale is used to convert the time.

Get-Date uses the –UFormat parameter with format specifiers to display the current system date and time. The format specifier %Z represents the UTC offset of -07.

The $Time variable stores the current system date and time. $Time uses the ToUniversalTime() method to convert the time based on the computer’s UTC offset.

 

Create a timestamp:

$timestamp = Get-Date -Format o | ForEach-Object { $_ -replace “:”, “.” }
New-Item -Path C:\Test\$timestamp -Type Directory

In this example, a format specifier creates a timestamp String object for a directory name. The timestamp includes the date, time, and UTC offset.

The $timestamp variable stores the results of a Get-Date command. Get-Date uses the Format parameter with the format specifier of lowercase o to create a timestamp String object.

The object is sent down the pipeline to ForEach-Object. A ScriptBlock contains the $_ variable that represents the current pipeline object. The timestamp string is delimited by colons that are replaced by periods.

New-Item uses the Path parameter to specify the location for a new directory. The path includes the $timestamp variable as the directory name. The –Type parameter specifies that a directory is created.

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