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Using the Get-Date Cmdlet

  • Article

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:

  • AddSeconds

  • AddMinutes

  • AddHours

  • AddDays

  • AddMonths

  • AddYears

Need to know the date/time 137 minutes from now? This command will show you:

(Get-Date).AddMinutes(137)