Скачать или смотреть Forcing the YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS Date Format in PowerShell DIR Listings

Learn how to format PowerShell DIR output to the `YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS` format, enabling a consistent datetime representation across systems.
---
This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/63876413/ asked by the user 'rossmcm' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/89691/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/63882866/ provided by the user 'Theo' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/9898643/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

Visit these links for original content and any more details, such as alternate solutions, latest updates/developments on topic, comments, revision history etc. For example, the original title of the Question was: Forcing the date format in a powershell DIR listing

Also, Content (except music) licensed under CC BY-SA https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/l...
The original Question post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... ) license, and the original Answer post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... ) license.

If anything seems off to you, please feel free to write me at vlogize [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
---
Forcing the YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS Date Format in PowerShell DIR Listings

When working on a Python project that processes directory listings, you might find yourself in a situation where the date format is inconsistent and doesn't meet your requirements. A user recently faced this challenge with the output from DIR commands, needing a specific datetime format of YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.

This guide will delve into how to tackle this issue in PowerShell, ensuring that your datetime output remains consistent, easy to read, and compatible with various locales.

Understanding the Problem

The DIR command in the command prompt produces output that can vary based on system settings. For instance:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Some major issues with this output include:

Absence of seconds: The time representation doesn’t include seconds, which may be critical for precise logging.

Variable width format: The format can differ between PCs or locales, making it hard to parse programmatically.

PowerShell’s DIR command also reveals similar issues:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Observer similar problems as above but with slightly different formatting. Therefore, we need a way to standardize the output for easier processing.

The Solution: Using PowerShell for Custom Formatting

PowerShell offers a robust feature set for adjusting the output display of commands. To achieve a YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS format, we can use "calculated properties" in PowerShell combined with the -f format operator.

Step-by-Step Guide

Here’s how to format the output correctly:

Open PowerShell: Start by launching your PowerShell environment.

Select Your Path: Replace 'ThePath' with the actual path of the directory you wish to list.

Use the Command: Execute the following command in your PowerShell console:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Here's what this command does:

Get-ChildItem: Lists the files and directories in the specified path.

Select-Object: Creates a custom object that formats the LastWriteTime property using a template string.

@ {n='LastWriteTime';e={'{0:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss}' -f $_.LastWriteTime}}: This snippet renames the property to LastWriteTime and formats it as required.

Example Output

After running the command, the output would resemble:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Conclusion

By utilizing PowerShell's flexibility with date formatting, you can easily customize the output from your directory listings to meet specific, agnostic requirements. The command provided will give you a consistent datetime format that can be utilized further in your Python application without the hassle of managing locale-dependent settings.

Feel free to implement the above solution in your projects and ensure your directory data is presented uniformly and evidently.