{"id":12901,"date":"2011-08-25T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-08-25T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2011\/08\/25\/use-culture-information-in-powershell-to-format-dates\/"},"modified":"2011-08-25T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-25T00:01:00","slug":"use-culture-information-in-powershell-to-format-dates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/use-culture-information-in-powershell-to-format-dates\/","title":{"rendered":"Use Culture Information in PowerShell to Format Dates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/strong>: Learn how to use culture information in Windows PowerShell to format dates.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Hey,Hey, Scripting Guy! I enjoyed your article yesterday<\/a> about manually changing the way a date is displayed using string techniques. But the problem is that is a bit complicated, and is even potentially error prone. Is there an easier way to work with dates and times in Windows PowerShell than manually creating string values in specific orders?<\/p>\n

—KL<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Hey,Hello KL,<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy Ed Wilson here. The technique that allows for automatic conversion of date types is called culture settings<\/i>. Whenever I think about culture, I remember Vienna, Austria. It seems the city’s motto is “Where business meets culture.” I have taught several Windows PowerShell, VBScript, and WMI classes in Vienna over the years, and it is one of my favorite cities. Here is a photo I took of the Mozart statue during one of my last trips over.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

To me, the Get-Culture <\/b>cmdlet will always be associated with Viennese classical music and long walks in the park that was near to our hotel.<\/p>\n

Whoops! It seems I have spoiled the surprise. To work automatically with dates, it is necessary to interact with the CultureInfo<\/a> settings and the DateTime structure<\/a> from the .NET Framework. It is easy to convert a string into an instance of the DateTime<\/b> structure. This is called casting<\/i>, and to do this, I place the DateTime<\/b> inside square brackets. The code that appears here converts a string into a DateTime<\/b> object:<\/p>\n

[datetime]”8\/25\/11″<\/p>\n

When converting a string into a DateTime<\/b> object, the way the value displays depends on the current culture settings. I can use the Get-Culture<\/b> cmdlet to determine my current culture settings. The command and associated output are shown here:<\/p>\n

PS C:\\Users\\ed.IAMMRED> Get-Culture<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

LCID             Name             DisplayName                                                                 <\/p>\n

—-             —-             ———–                                                                 <\/p>\n

1033             en-US            English (United States)    <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By using the Get-Member<\/b> cmdlet, I can see there is much more information available as well as a large number of methods that facilitate working with cultural settings. The Get-Member<\/b> cmdlet (gm<\/b> is the alias for the Get-Member<\/b> cmdlet) and associated output are shown in the following figure.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

The DateTimeFormat<\/b> property that is returned from the Get-Culture<\/b> cmdlet contains an object. This object is culture specific, and it contains DateTimeFormat<\/b> information that corresponds to the cultural settings. Because the DateTimeFormat<\/b> property returns an object, I can directly access by using a dotted notation:<\/p>\n

(Get-culture).DateTimeFormat<\/p>\n

The command and associated output are shown in the following figure.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

In the preceding figure, note that the ShortDatePattern<\/b> m\/d\/yyyy<\/b> is Month\/Day\/Year<\/b>, which is the way dates are written in my cultural setting, en-US<\/b>. The first two letters, en<\/b>, correspond to English. The second two letters, US<\/b>, correspond to the country. This is necessary because there are differences between English in the United States and in the United Kingdom (en-GB).<\/p>\n

Now for the really cool stuff. Anyone who has played around with the Get-Date<\/b> cmdlet has seen the format <\/i>parameter. I can use this parameter to configure the way that I want a date to display. For example, if I want day\/month\/two-digit year, I can use the command shown here:<\/p>\n

Get-Date -Format “dd-MM-yy”<\/p>\n

By examining, the date patterns returned by the DateTimeFormatInfo<\/a> object that comes back from the DateTimeFormat<\/b> property, it dawned on me that I could use those patterns directly with the format<\/i> parameter of the Get-Date<\/b> cmdlet. This simplifies creating certain types of date outputs, and is more accurate as well because of the strong possibility of making a typo. For example, if I want to use the date in the UniversalSortableDateTimePattern<\/b> format, I can use the command that is shown here:<\/p>\n

Get-Date -Format “yyyy’-‘MM’-‘dd HH’:’mm’:’ss’Z'”<\/p>\n

One problem is that this pattern appears somewhat cryptic. I can also directly use the UniversalSortableDateTimePattern<\/b> property from the DateTimeFormatInfo<\/b> object that is returned from the Get-Culture<\/b> cmdlet. The UniversalSortableDateTimePattern<\/b> property does not change from culture to culture, but other patterns, such as short date patterns, do change. Therefore, I can use the command that is shown here:<\/p>\n

Get-Date -Format (Get-culture).DateTimeFormat.UniversalSortableDateTimePattern <\/p>\n

Because I can easily create a new instance of a CultureInfo<\/b> class by supplying either the culture ID (LCID)<\/a> or the culture name, that means I can convert the date output with ease, and with no hard-coding. In the code that follows, I create an instance of the German (Germany) cultureInfo<\/b> class. I then use this class to display a short date in the German (Germany) pattern.<\/p>\n

$de = New-Object system.globalization.cultureinfo(“de-DE”)<\/p>\n

get-date -format ($de.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern)<\/p>\n

 After I know that I can create an instance of a specific cultureInfo<\/b> class and use it to display a date in a particular format, I can write a script to display dates in a variety of outputs. The preferred way to create an instance of a cultureInfo<\/b> class is to use the string<\/b> method. The culture names are documented on the same page where the LCIDs are located<\/a>. In the DisplayAlternateShortDates.ps1 script, I create an array of assorted culture string names. Next, I use the foreach<\/b> <\/i>statement to walk through the array of culture names. Inside the foreach<\/b> <\/i>loop, I use the New-Object<\/b> cmdlet to create a new instance of a cultureinfo<\/b> object. I pass the string name as an input argument to the cmdlet, and store the returned cultureinfo<\/b> object in the $culture<\/b> variable. Next, I use the Get-Date<\/b> cmdlet to create the current date in the format specified by the shortDatePattern<\/b> property. I then create a custom psobject<\/b> that holds the culture name in a name<\/b> property and the formatted short date in the date<\/b> property. The complete DisplayAlternateShortDates.ps1 script s shown here:<\/i><\/p>\n

$cultures = “en-US”,”en-GB”,”fr-CA”,”fr-FR”,”ms-MY”,”zh-HK”<\/p>\n

foreach ($c in $cultures)<\/p>\n

{<\/p>\n

 $culture = New-Object system.globalization.cultureinfo($c)<\/p>\n

 $date = get-date -format ($culture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern)<\/p>\n

 New-Object psobject -Property @{“name”=$culture.displayname; “date”=$date}<\/p>\n

}<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The script and associated output are shown in the following figure.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

I can use the static GetCultures<\/b> method from the globalization.cultureinfo<\/b> .NET Framework class to return culture names and IDs. If I want to see all the cultures, I use the “allcultures”<\/b> enumeration. This command is shown here:<\/p>\n

[globalization.cultureinfo]::GetCultures(“allCultures”)<\/p>\n

The output returns an object, and I can filter based upon the name. In the following command, I filter out all cultures that contain the cultures that begin with fr<\/b> <\/i>by using the following command:<\/p>\n

[globalization.cultureinfo]::GetCultures(“allCultures”) | where {$_.name -match ‘^fr’} <\/p>\n

By using this approach, I can display the date for all French cultures as shown here in the DisplayAlternateShortDatesFrench.ps1 script:<\/p>\n

$cultures = [globalization.cultureinfo]::GetCultures(“allCultures”) |<\/p>\n

  where-object {$_.name -match ‘^fr’}<\/p>\n

foreach ($c in $cultures)<\/p>\n

{<\/p>\n

 $culture = New-Object system.globalization.cultureinfo($c)<\/p>\n

 $date = get-date -format ($culture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern)<\/p>\n

 New-Object psobject -Property @{“name”=$culture.displayname; “date”=$date}<\/p>\n

} <\/p>\n

The script and output are shown in the following figure.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

KL that is all there is to using culture information to format dates. Join me tomorrow as I introduce a new Windows PowerShell superhero.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Learn how to use culture information in Windows PowerShell to format dates.   Hey, Scripting Guy! I enjoyed your article yesterday about manually changing the way a date is displayed using string techniques. But the problem is that is a bit complicated, and is even potentially error prone. Is there an easier way to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13,51,3,4,45],"class_list":["post-12901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-dates-and-times","tag-getting-started","tag-scripting-guy","tag-scripting-techniques","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: Learn how to use culture information in Windows PowerShell to format dates.   Hey, Scripting Guy! I enjoyed your article yesterday about manually changing the way a date is displayed using string techniques. But the problem is that is a bit complicated, and is even potentially error prone. Is there an easier way to […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}