How to get UTC time with windows batch file

Question

I have been trying to find a way of getting a windows batch file to display the current UTC time when run. So in other words get the current amount of milliseconds since it was initiated in 1970.

Does anyone know how to do this.

Answer 1

Using WMI:

for /f %%x in ('wmic path win32_utctime get /format:list ^| findstr "="') do set %%x

This will set the variables Day, DayofWeek, Hour, Minute, Month, Quarter, Second, WeekInMonth and Year which you can use, then.

You won't get a time with Unix epoch from Windows easily, though. If you have PowerShell you can use

[long]((date).touniversaltime()-[datetime]'1970-01-01').totalmilliseconds

which you can call from a batchfile via

powershell "..."

But in that case you could write your batch file in a real language anyway.

Answer 2

Alternative:

REM get UTC times:
for /f %%a in ('wmic Path Win32_UTCTime get Year^,Month^,Day^,Hour^,Minute^,Second /Format:List ^| findstr "="') do (set %%a)
Set Second=0%Second%
Set Second=%Second:~-2%
Set Minute=0%Minute%
Set Minute=%Minute:~-2%
Set Hour=0%Hour%
Set Hour=%Hour:~-2%
Set Day=0%Day%
Set Day=%Day:~-2%
Set Month=0%Month%
Set Month=%Month:~-2%
set UTCTIME=%Hour%:%Minute%:%Second%
set UTCDATE=%Year%%Month%%Day%