PowerShell – Convert Datetime to String

The PowerShell DateTime object has a built-in method that converts datetime to string. The ToString() method of the DateTime object converts a DateTime to a string representation. This method accepts arguments where you can specify the format of the string.

ToString() method allows you to specify the format for the string representation of a DateTime object., you can specify the datetime format like "ddMMyyyy", “dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm:ss” etc…

In this article, we will discuss how to convert date to a string in PowerShell.

PowerShell Convert Date to String

In PowerShell to convert date to string, use the following script that uses the ToString() method of the DateTime object.

# Get the date
$date = Get-Date 

# Convert the datetime to string
$str = $date.ToString()                                                                    

# Print the string represention for the datetime object
$str                                                                                       

# Use the custom format to specify the datetime format

$str = $date.ToString("ddMMyyyy") 

# Use the custom format to specify datetime format
$str = $date.ToString("dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm:ss")

In the above PowerShell script, the Get-Date cmdlet in PowerShell gets the current date and stores it in the $date variable. Using the ToString() method of the DateTime object, it converts a DateTime to a String in PowerShell.

Custom formats specified in the ToString() methods like "ddMMyyyy" and "dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm:ss" convert date to string in PowerShell.

The output of the above POwerShell script to convert date to string is:

Another way to convert a datetime object to a string is by using the -f operator. The -f operator performs the string formatting as specified in {0:dd-MM-yyyy}.

$str = '{0:dd-MM-yyyy}' -f (Get-Date '19-01-2023') 

In the above PowerShell script, the Get-Date cmdlet gets the datetime object for the specified date and passes the datetime object to the -f operator, which uses the string format to convert the date to a string in PowerShell.

The output of the above PowerShell script is:

C:\$str = '{0:dd-MM-yyyy}' -f (Get-Date '19-01-2023') 

PS C:\> $str
19-01-2023

Use ToShortDateString() to Convert Date to String in PowerShell

A DateTime object has ToShortDateString() method that converts a datetime object to a string in PowerShell.

# Get the date
$date = Get-Date 

# Use ToShortDateString() to convert datetime to string
$str = $date.ToShortDateString() 

# Print the string
$str

In the above PowerShell script, the Get-Date cmdlet in PowerShell gets the current date and stores it in the $date variable. Use the ToShortDateString() method of the DateTime object to convert the date into the string format.

The output of the above PowerShell script is:

PS C:\> $str = $date.ToShortDateString()                                                           
PS C:\> $str                                                                                       
03-02-2023

Cool Tip: How to convert string to date in PowerShell!

Conclusion

I hope the above article on how to convert datetime to string using DateTime methods like ToString(), ToShortDateString(), and -f operator is helpful to you.

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