In PowerShell, it provides a Get-Date
cmdlet to get the current date and time and Out-File
and other cmdlets to write the date and time to a file.
The Out-File cmdlet in PowerShell sends the output to a file.
In this article, we will discuss how to retrieve the date and time and output the date time to the file in PowerShell.
Date and Time Output to a File
To send the current date and time output to a file, we can use the Get-Date and Out-File cmdlets:
$demoFile = "D:\PS\aduser_backup.log" Get-Date | Out-File -FilePath $demoFile
In the above PowerShell script, the $demoFile holds the file path. The Get-Date cmdlet retrieves the current date and time of the systems and pipes it to the Out-File cmdlet to output the date to a file.
The output of the above script writes the current date and time to the specified file in the default date format.
![PowerShell Write Date to a File PowerShell Write Date to a File](https://shellgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/powershell-write-date-to-file.png)
Write Customized Date and Time Format to File
You can use the -Format
parameter with the Get-Date cmdlet to customize the date and time format and write the date to a file using the Out-File command.
$demoFile = "D:\PS\aduser_backup.log" $dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" (Get-Date).ToString($dateFormat) | Out-File -FilePath $demoFile Get-Content -Path $demoFile
In the above PowerShell script, variable $demoFile
contains the file path. $dateFormat
variable stores the customized date format. Using the ToString() method over the Get-Date command with the format, it formats the date and time and passes the output to the Out-File
command to write the date and time to a file.
The output of the above PowerShell script writes the current date and time to a file.
PS C:\> $demoFile = "D:\PS\aduser_backup.log" PS C:\> $dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" PS C:\> (Get-Date).ToString($dateFormat) | Out-File -FilePath $demoFile
PS C:\> Get-Content -Path $demoFile 2023-04-09 23:17:05
PS C:\>
Use Out-File -Append Date and Time to an Existing File
To append the date and time to an existing file, use the -Append
parameter with the Out-File cmdlet.
$demoFile = "D:\PS\aduser_backup.log" $dateFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss" (Get-Date).ToString($dateFormat) | Out-File -FilePath $demoFile -Append Get-Content -Path $demoFile
In the above PowerShell script, the Out-File cmdlet uses the parameter -Append
to output date time to log file.
Conclusion
I hope the above article on how to use PowerShell to write the date to a file using the Get-Date and Out-File cmdlets is useful to you.
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