Windows PowerShell<\/B><\/A> a try, not only can you carry out this task, but \u2013 even better \u2013 you can do so with a minimal amount of effort:<\/P>$a = Get-Date “2\/13\/2007 8:00 AM”<\/p>\n$b = Get-ChildItem “C:\\Scripts”<\/p>\n
foreach ($i in $b)\n{\n $i.LastWriteTime = $a\n $a = $a.AddMinutes(1) \n}<\/p>\n
$b\n<\/PRE>\n
Explain how this all works? Well, sure we can do that (although we were<\/I> hoping to get by with minimal effort ourselves). As you can see, we start out simply enough, using the Get-Date<\/B> Cmdlet to create a datetime object ($a) equivalent to 8:00 AM on February 13, 2007:<\/P>$a = Get-Date “2\/13\/2007 8:00 AM”\n<\/PRE>\nAs you can probably guess, we\u2019ll use $a to represent our starting date and time.<\/P>\n
We then use this line of code, and the Get-ChildItem<\/B> Cmdlet, to retrieve a collection of all the files found in the folder C:\\Scripts:<\/P>$b = Get-ChildItem “C:\\Scripts”\n<\/PRE>\nIncidentally, AF, you noted in your email that you\u2019d like the files to be sorted alphabetically. Turns out that was something we could do with even less<\/I> than minimal effort; by default, Get-ChildItem returns its collection already sorted in alphabetical order. That means that, at the moment, we have a collection of files that looks a little something like this:<\/P>Mode LastWriteTime Length Name\n—- ————- —— —-\n-a— 2\/11\/2007 3:31 PM 89 1024.ps1\n-a— 12\/13\/2006 9:11 AM 56 1026.ps1\n-a— 1\/21\/2007 6:19 PM 133 1030.ps1\n-a— 8\/4\/2006 4:41 PM 99 1032.ps1\n-a— 2\/9\/2006 6:04 PM 146 1035.ps1\n-a— 1\/22\/2005 8:05 AM 68 1045.ps1\n<\/PRE>\nYou\u2019re right, that was<\/I> easy, wasn\u2019t it? And guess what: changing the value of the LastWriteTime<\/B> property for each file isn\u2019t all that much harder. In fact, that\u2019s what we do with this block of code:<\/P>foreach ($i in $b)\n {\n $i.LastWriteTime = $a\n $a = $a.AddMinutes(1) \n }\n<\/PRE>\nWhat we\u2019re doing here is setting up a For Each loop that loops through all the items in $b; that is, through all the files in the folder C:\\Scripts:<\/P>
foreach ($i in $b)\n<\/PRE>\nEach time we run through the loop we\u2019re going to do two things. First, we\u2019re going to set the LastWriteTime<\/B> property of the file (represented by the variable $i) to the datetime value stored in $a:<\/P>$i.LastWriteTime = $a\n<\/PRE>\nThat means that the first file in the collection will be assigned a LastWriteTime of 8:00 AM on February 13, 2007.<\/P>\n
Now, if we wanted all the files in C:\\Scripts to have the same<\/I> timestamp we\u2019d be done. However, that\u2019s not what we want; instead, we want each file to have a slightly different timestamp. That\u2019s the purpose of the second line of code inside our For Each loop:<\/P>$a = $a.AddMinutes(1)\n<\/PRE>\nWhat we\u2019re doing here is using the AddMinutes<\/B> method to increment our datetime value ($a) by 1 minute (hence the 1 that we pass to AddMinutes as the method parameter). As you no doubt recall, $a started off life being equal to 8:00 AM on February 13, 2007. By adding a minute to this value, we\u2019re going to make $a equal to 8:01 AM on February 13, 2007. In turn, that will cause the second file in the collection to be assigned a LastWriteTime one minute later than the first file timestamp. And then the third file will be assigned a timestamp one minute later than that<\/I>, the fourth file a timestamp one minute later than the third file\u2019s, etc.<\/P>\n
The net result? This:<\/P>
Mode LastWriteTime Length Name\n—- ————- —— —-\n-a— 2\/13\/2007 8:00 AM 89 1024.ps1\n-a— 2\/13\/2007 8:01 AM 56 1026.ps1\n-a— 2\/13\/2007 8:02 AM 133 1030.ps1\n-a— 2\/13\/2007 8:03 AM 99 1032.ps1\n-a— 2\/13\/2007 8:04 AM 146 1035.ps1\n-a— 2\/13\/2007 8:05 AM 68 1045.ps1\n<\/PRE>\nWhich, all in all, seems to be just the thing you were hoping you would get.<\/P>\n
As for the Scripting Guys, break time is over and it\u2019s time to get to work scoring all those Scripting Games entries. Yes, sir, time to do some real work. Right \u2026 unless you have another question, AF? Oh, OK, then we guess it\u2019s back to work. Um, unless someone else<\/I> has a question. Anyone? Don\u2019t be shy now. Anyone at all \u2026.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I change the last modified timestamp for all the files in a folder? I\u2019d like the first file to have a specified timestamp, then each subsequent file to have a timestamp one minute later than the previous file.— AF Hey, AF; glad to see that you\u2019re taking a break from […]<\/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":[13,38,11,3,12,5],"class_list":["post-65523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-dates-and-times","tag-files","tag-folders","tag-scripting-guy","tag-storage","tag-vbscript"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"
Hey, Scripting Guy! How can I change the last modified timestamp for all the files in a folder? I\u2019d like the first file to have a specified timestamp, then each subsequent file to have a timestamp one minute later than the previous file.— AF Hey, AF; glad to see that you\u2019re taking a break from […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65523","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=65523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65523\/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=65523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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