What Does This Mean?

[JanSco]

I got some code off the internet which appends the current date to the end of a filename and changes the '/' to a '-'.  It's exactly what I needed.  However, I would like to understand what the code means (starting with the first %).

copy MainFile.TXT MainFile%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%-%date:~10%.txt
                                                              
                                                    

[dworley]

when there is something written inside %%s (like %joe%) it is referring to the variable stated inside the %%s (like joe)...

So, when it refers to %date....%, it is referring to the integrated variable "date" (which, as you may guess is the current date).

The other bits within the %%s are formatting items. Initially, %date% is "day mm/dd/yyy" (like 'wed 02/22/2002)... which doesn't work well in a name because of the slashes. So it must be parsed out...

for example %date:~4,2% means to take %date% and only return the parts after the 4th character. The 2 refers to the length of the string to return. So basically, this tells it to return characters 4-6 of the %date% string.

It does this three times to give the date in the filename.

I hope this makes sense...

-darryl