Windows Command Line - Changing a file modified timestamp to an earlier datetime

Question

in windows command line i can use the following to change the timestamp of a file to the current datetime:

copy /b filename.ext +,,

what i need is a way to set the timestamp to a previous datetime (-1 day, -1 week etc)

is this possible?

What i typically do in linux is this:

touch -d "$(date -R -r filename) - 2 hours" filename

But i need this for windows command line, not powershell or any other alternative.

You could do it programmatically but I don't think there are any in-box tools to do it. — Anders, Apr 20 '18 at 10:29

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 14 '20 at 12:43

2

In Powershell, this works:

(gci)[1].LastWriteTimeUtc = (New-Object datetime 2013,12,31)

answered Jun 14 '20 at 12:43

Mike Makarov

What is `(gci)[1]`? – Matthieu Mar 01 '23 at 09:15
1

GCI is alias to Get-ChildItem. It returns an array of files. [1] is the index of the file. You can use any other method to locate the file object of the file you need. – Mike Makarov Mar 01 '23 at 16:20

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 20 '18 at 11:48

In the end i used the windows port for Gnu:

This example changes the timestamp for all files in a folder:

for /f "tokens=*" %i in ('dir "C:\Data\*" /s /b') do ("GnuWin32\Touch.exe" -t 1003141400 "%i")

or in a batch script:

for /f "tokens=*" %%i in ('dir "C:\Data\*" /s /b') do ("GnuWin32\Touch.exe" -t 1003141400 "%%i")

2 Answers2