FileSetTime

Changes the datetime stamp of one or more files or folders. Wildcards are supported.

FileSetTime , YYYYMMDDHH24MISS, FilePattern, WhichTime, OperateOnFolders, Recurse

Parameters

YYYYMMDDHH24MISS

If blank or omitted, it defaults to the current local date and time. Otherwise, specify the time to use for the operation (see Remarks for the format). Years prior to 1601 are not supported.

This parameter is an expression. Consequently, do not enclose variables in percent signs, and separate each variable from the next with at least one space, e.g. FileSetTime, Year Month Day, C:\My File.txt.

FilePattern

If blank or omitted, the current file of the innermost enclosing file loop will be used. Otherwise, specify the name of a single file or folder, or a wildcard pattern such as C:\Temp\*.tmp. FilePattern is assumed to be in %A_WorkingDir% if an absolute path isn't specified.

WhichTime

If blank or omitted, it defaults to M. Otherwise, specify one of the following letters to set which timestamp should be changed:

OperateOnFolders

If blank or omitted, it defaults to 0. Otherwise, specify one of the following digits:

Note: If FilePattern is a single folder rather than a wildcard pattern, it will always be operated upon regardless of this setting.

This parameter can be an expression.

Recurse

If blank or omitted, it defaults to 0. Otherwise, specify one of the following digits:

This parameter can be an expression.

Error Handling

[v1.1.04+]: This command is able to throw an exception on failure. For more information, see Runtime Errors.

ErrorLevel is set to the number of files that failed to be changed or 0 otherwise. If the specified timestamp is invalid, or FilePattern resolves to a blank value, ErrorLevel is set to 1.

If files were found, A_LastError is set to 0 (zero) or the result of the operating system's GetLastError() function immediately after the last failure. Otherwise A_LastError contains an error code that might indicate why no files were found.

Remarks

A file's last access time might not be as precise on FAT16 & FAT32 volumes as it is on NTFS volumes.

The elements of the YYYYMMDDHH24MISS format are:

Element Description
YYYY The 4-digit year
MM The 2-digit month (01-12)
DD The 2-digit day of the month (01-31)
HH24 The 2-digit hour in 24-hour format (00-23). For example, 09 is 9am and 21 is 9pm.
MI The 2-digit minutes (00-59)
SS The 2-digit seconds (00-59)

If only a partial string is given for YYYYMMDDHH24MISS (e.g. 200403), any remaining element that has been omitted will be supplied with the following default values:

The built-in variable A_Now contains the current local time in the above format. Similarly, A_NowUTC contains the current Coordinated Universal Time.

Note: Date-time values can be compared, added to, or subtracted from via EnvAdd and EnvSub. Also, it is best to not use greater-than or less-than to compare times unless they are both the same string length. This is because they would be compared as numbers; for example, 20040201 is always numerically less (but chronologically greater) than 200401010533. So instead use EnvSub to find out whether the amount of time between them is positive or negative.

FileGetTime, FileGetAttrib, FileSetAttrib, FileGetSize, FileGetVersion, FormatTime, file loop, EnvAdd (date math), EnvSub (date difference)

Examples

Sets the modification time to the current time for all matching files.

FileSetTime, , C:\temp\*.txt

Sets the modification date (time will be midnight).

FileSetTime, 20040122, C:\My Documents\test.doc

Sets the creation date. The time will be set to 4:55pm.

FileSetTime, 200401221655, C:\My Documents\test.doc, C

Changes the mod-date of all files that match a pattern. Any matching folders will also be changed due to the last parameter.

FileSetTime, 20040122165500, C:\Temp\*.*, M, 1