Batch File | PowerCram Network

Get Yesterday’s date in MS DOS Batch file

A while back while I was trying to figure out the best way to gather some log files from Amazon S3 buckets and some web servers I run. These resources are currently generating around 10-15GB of uncompressed log files daily. Besides being fairly large in size the S3 (and CloudFront) log files are numerous. Any given bucket can easily generate 1,000 or more log files per day – that’s a whole other story. . .

Anyway, I wanted to be able to run a process sometime after midnight that would gather and zip the previous day’s files and stash the zipped files in another location for archival. It’s pretty easy to calculate the previous day’s date if it’s in the middle of the month, but what if it’s the first of the month, first of the year, and what about leap year, etc., etc. . . ? So I searched around the web a bit and came across a great solution to this issue on Experts Exchange (Get Yesterday date in MS DOS Batch file). Thanks to SteveGTR for this one.

I have modified the original script a bit to suite my needs. Most notably at the end of the script I create two variables, IISDT and AWSDT, to match IIS and Amazon Web Services (S3 and CloudFront) log formats, respectively. I use this in a simple batch file which is executed like, “gather_log_files.bat 1.” The number “1” is passed into the script which calculates the date of “1” day before the current date. Of course you could pass any number in there to generate a date x days in the past. It’s very slick. NOTE: If you don’t specify a number after the batch file “1” is assumed.

So, without further ado, here’s the script.

@echo off

set yyyy=

set $tok=1-3
for /f "tokens=1 delims=.:/-, " %%u in ('date /t') do set $d1=%%u
if "%$d1:~0,1%" GTR "9" set $tok=2-4
for /f "tokens=%$tok% delims=.:/-, " %%u in ('date /t') do (
for /f "skip=1 tokens=2-4 delims=/-,()." %%x in ('echo.^|date') do (
set %%x=%%u
set %%y=%%v
set %%z=%%w
set $d1=
set $tok=))

if "%yyyy%"=="" set yyyy=%yy%
if /I %yyyy% LSS 100 set /A yyyy=2000 + 1%yyyy% - 100

set CurDate=%mm%/%dd%/%yyyy%
set dayCnt=%1

if "%dayCnt%"=="" set dayCnt=1

REM Substract your days here
set /A dd=1%dd% - 100 - %dayCnt%
set /A mm=1%mm% - 100

:CHKDAY
if /I %dd% GTR 0 goto DONE
set /A mm=%mm% - 1
if /I %mm% GTR 0 goto ADJUSTDAY
set /A mm=12
set /A yyyy=%yyyy% - 1

:ADJUSTDAY
if %mm%==1 goto SET31
if %mm%==2 goto LEAPCHK
if %mm%==3 goto SET31
if %mm%==4 goto SET30
if %mm%==5 goto SET31
if %mm%==6 goto SET30
if %mm%==7 goto SET31
if %mm%==8 goto SET31
if %mm%==9 goto SET30
if %mm%==10 goto SET31
if %mm%==11 goto SET30
REM ** Month 12 falls through

:SET31
set /A dd=31 + %dd%
goto CHKDAY

:SET30
set /A dd=30 + %dd%
goto CHKDAY

:LEAPCHK
set /A tt=%yyyy% %% 4
if not %tt%==0 goto SET28
set /A tt=%yyyy% %% 100
if not %tt%==0 goto SET29
set /A tt=%yyyy% %% 400
if %tt%==0 goto SET29

:SET28
set /A dd=28 + %dd%
goto CHKDAY

:SET29
set /A dd=29 + %dd%
goto CHKDAY

:DONE
if /I %mm% LSS 10 set mm=0%mm%
if /I %dd% LSS 10 set dd=0%dd%

REM Set IIS and AWS date variables
set IISDT=%yyyy:~2,2%%mm%%dd%
set AWSDT=%yyyy%-%mm%-%dd%

The results would look like:

IIS Date: 20100727

AWS Date: 2010-07-27

Testing If a Directory Exists from a Batch File