Basics with Windows Power Shell by Prometheus MMS - HTML preview

1.2 Listing Date and Time Information

   As you might expect, the Get-Date cmdlet enables you to retrieve the current date and time. As you might also expect, there are a few other interesting tricks you can do with Get-Date, some of which we’ll show you momentarily.

   Let’s start with the simplest scenario first. If all you want is the current date and time then simply call Get-Date without any additional parameters:

Get-Date

In return, you’ll get back something similar to this:

Wed May 10 10:07:25 2006

Ah, but suppose you want only the date, not the date and the time? Then just use the displayhint parameter and specify date:

Get-Date -displayhint date

Or, if you’d prefer just the time:

Get-Date -displayhint time

You can also use Get-Date to create a date-time object for any date/time. For example, this command creates a variable named $A that maps to 12:00 AM on May 1, 2006:

$A = Get-Date 5 / 1/2006

What’s that? You need to map $A to 7:00 AM on May 1, 2006? Why not:

$A = Get-Date "5/1/2006 7:00 AM"

Get-Date also includes a number of methods for doing some handy-dandy date arithmetic:

Add Seconds

Add Minutes

Add Hours

Add Days

Add Months

Add Years

Need to know the date/time 137 minutes from now? This command will show you: ( Get-Date).AddMinutes (137)