Greg\u2019s hat<\/B><\/A> may never be the same again.<\/P>\nBut enough about all that. As you can see, even it first glance, this is a slightly-more complicated script than you might have expected. Why? Well, before we can rename a file we have to bind to that file using a script; in order to do that, we need to know the complete file path. And that\u2019s<\/I> a problem: after all, each day the file is going to have a different name. (For example, if today this is named BackupFile-06122007.txt, then tomorrow it will be named BackupFile-06132007.txt, and so on.) Thus we have to do two things here: figure out the current name of the file, and then<\/I> rename it.<\/P>\n
Sounds hard, doesn\u2019t it? However, because GZ needs to run this script every single day this turns out to be surprisingly easy.<\/P>\n
Let\u2019s show you what we mean by that. Our script starts off by connecting to the WMI service on the local computer (although this script works equally well against a file stored on a remote computer). This is the point where we would typically bind to the file in question. So why don\u2019t we do that now? That\u2019s easy: we don\u2019t know which file to bind to. Therefore, before we can do anything else we need to figure out the file path for our target file. And because part of that path (and part of the file name) consists of yesterday\u2019s date, we run this block of code:<\/P>
strMonth = Month(Date – 1)<\/p>\nIf Len(strMonth) = 1 Then\n strMonth = “0” & strMonth\nEnd If<\/p>\n
strDay = Day(Date – 1)<\/p>\n
If Len(strDay) = 1 Then\n strDay = “0” & strDay\nEnd If<\/p>\n
strYear = Year(Date – 1)\n<\/PRE>\n
What are we doing here? Well, to begin with, we use the Month<\/B> function to determine the month for yesterday\u2019s<\/I> date; that\u2019s what the Date \u2013 1<\/B> is for (the current date minus 1 day). The Month function is going to return an integer value representing the month; for example, the function returns 10 if the yesterday\u2019s month fell in October, 12 if yesterday\u2019s month fell in December, and 6 if yesterday\u2019s month fell in June. <\/P>\n
And yes, you\u2019re right: we already have a problem, don\u2019t we? Suppose we used this date in the file name: 1112007. So is that 1\/11\/2007, or is that 11\/1\/2007? Truthfully, there\u2019s no way to tell. Therefore, we need to make sure that the months (and days) are listed as two-digit values, with leading zeroes used to pad the single-digit months. (In other words, modifying the month of June to be 06 rather than 6.)<\/P>\n
Fortunately, that\u2019s pretty easy to take care of: we just use the Len<\/B> function to determine the number of characters in the month (technically, in the variable strMonth). If there\u2019s only one character in the month we then use this block of code to add a leading 0, changing 6 to 06:<\/P>strMonth = “0” & strMonth\n<\/PRE>\nWhat if there are already two characters in the variable strMonth? Then we don\u2019t do anything at all; we\u2019re fine. And if there are three<\/I> characters in the month? Then that means the Scripting Guys really need to stop taking their laptops on water rides like Popeye and Bluto<\/I>. (It\u2019s just so hard to tear yourself away from email, you know?)<\/P>\n
We then repeat this process for the day, using the Day<\/B> function to extract the day portion of yesterday\u2019s date and, again, adding a leading zero if needed:<\/P>strDay = Day(Date – 1)<\/p>\nIf Len(strDay) = 1 Then\n strDay = “0” & strDay\nEnd If\n<\/PRE>\n
Finally, we use the Year<\/B> function to assign the year for yesterday\u2019s date to a variable named strYear:<\/P>strYear = Year(Date – 1)\n<\/PRE>\nIn this case there\u2019s no need to add a leading zero because, by default, years are reported back as four-digit values.<\/P>\n
After we have the individual pieces we can then construct yesterday\u2019s date \u2013 and, in turn, the current file path \u2013 by using this line of code:<\/P>
strFileName = “C:\\\\Test\\\\BackupFile-” & strMonth & strDay & strYear & “.txt”\n<\/PRE>\nAs you can see, this is a pretty straightforward equation: we\u2019re just combining the file path and the first part of the file name (BackupFile-<\/B>) with the variables representing the month, day, and year, tacking the .txt<\/B> file extension on the end. The only tricky part here is that the \\ is a reserved character in WMI; among other things, that means that this character (like all reserved characters) must be \u201cescaped\u201d before that character can be used in a WMI Where clause. So how do you escape a character in WMI? That\u2019s easy: you just preface it with a \\. If you\u2019ve been sitting there wondering, \u201cWhy C:\\\\<\/B>Test\\\\<\/B>BackupFile-? Why not C:\\Test\\BackupFile-?\u201d well, now you know.<\/P>\n
After we\u2019ve figured out the current name of our file we then use a regular old ExecQuery<\/B> call to bind to the file, using the variable strFileName to represent the file path:<\/P>Set colFiles = objWMIService.ExecQuery _\n (“Select * From CIM_DataFile Where Name = ‘” & strFileName & “‘”)\n<\/PRE>\nAssuming all goes according to plan (and with the Scripting Guys everything always<\/I> goes according to plan; we just have a tendency to make really bad plans) we should get back a collection (with the name colFiles) consisting of all the files with the designated file path. And because file paths must be unique on a computer that means we\u2019ve located \u2013 and connected to \u2013 our target file.<\/P>\n
That also means that we\u2019re just about ready to rename the file. Before we can do that, though, we need to create a new name for our file. Fortunately we don\u2019t have to put much thought into that: we already know that the file is going to be named C:\\Test\\BackupFile-insert current date here<\/I>-.txt. With that in mind we go ahead and repeat the same process we just finished: we grab the month, day, and year, albeit this time for today\u2019s<\/I> date, not yesterday\u2019s date. Once we have all that data we construct a new file name and store that value in the variable strNewFileName:<\/P>strNewFileName = “C:\\\\Test\\\\BackupFile-” & strMonth & strDay & strYear & “.txt” \n<\/PRE>\nNow all we need is one line of code and the Rename<\/B> method and we can rename the file:<\/P>errResult = objFile.Rename(strNewFileName\n<\/PRE>\nAnd there you have it.<\/P>\n
Incidentally, we realize that many of you were unable to make it to the Scripting Son\u2019s baseball game, the one played in the torrential downpour. (But don\u2019t worry: he\u2019s got a good 50-60 games left this season.) If you\u2019re interested in knowing what the game was like, here\u2019s a handy hint: get in the car, drive for 50 miles, then sit down in a chair and have someone pour buckets of water over your head for the next two hours. And then get in the car and drive back home. That\u2019s pretty much all there was to it.<\/P>\n
\n<\/THEAD>\n\n\n| \n Note<\/B>. So are the Scripting Guys a little tired of spending all their time underwater? No, not really. After all, our careers<\/I> have been underwater for years; we might as well join them.<\/P><\/TD><\/TR><\/TBODY><\/TABLE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a file that has the name BackupFile-06122007.txt, where the 06122007 represents yesterday\u2019s date (June 12, 2007). Each morning I would like to run a script that changes the name of that file so that it uses today\u2019s date: BackupFile-06132007.txt. How can I do that?— GZ Hey, GZ. You know, one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":595,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38,3,12,5],"class_list":["post-64663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-files","tag-scripting-guy","tag-storage","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" Hey, Scripting Guy! I have a file that has the name BackupFile-06122007.txt, where the 06122007 represents yesterday\u2019s date (June 12, 2007). Each morning I would like to run a script that changes the name of that file so that it uses today\u2019s date: BackupFile-06132007.txt. How can I do that?— GZ Hey, GZ. You know, one […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64663","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\/595"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64663\/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=64663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} |
![\"Hey,](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/q-for-powertip.jpg\" "\\"Hey,")
\n![\"Spacer\"](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/05\/spacer.gif\")
![\"Hey,](\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/a-for-powertip.jpg\" "\\"Hey,")
![\"Script](\"http:\/\/img.microsoft.com\/library\/media\/1033\/technet\/images\/scriptcenter\/ad.jpg\" "\\"Script")
<\/A> \n