Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!ico!nbires!maa
From: maa@nbires.nbi.com (Mark Armbrust)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Good date programs
Summary: Method using native DOS commands
Message-ID: <392@nbires.nbi.com>
Date: 16 May 89 20:20:11 GMT
References: <1163@marlin.NOSC.MIL>
Reply-To: maa@nbires.UUCP (Mark Armbrust)
Distribution: na
Organization: NBI Inc, Boulder CO
Lines: 34

In article <1163@marlin.NOSC.MIL> jbjones@marlin.nosc.mil.UUCP (John B. Jones) writes:
>I need a nice date program which I can use at the command line, which
>won't expect a return or prompt me for a change, and which displays the
>date and the day of the week.  The output will probably look like this:
>
>	May 16, 1989 	Tuesday

If you are using CED you can make a clever alias (or put it in a batch file if
you are not):

syn date echo.|date %1|find /v "Enter"
         ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^  (put this in batch file)

"echo." with no spaces, outputs a return that feeds to the date command's 
request for a new date, "find /v" keeps this request from showing up on the
console.

Typing "date" results in "Current date is Tue  5-16-1989".  The date can be
set by typing "date <newdate>".

This same alias can be used withthe "time" command.

Note that the "echo." command behaves a bit differently on various versions
of DOS (I'm running 3.30).  You may have to look around a bit to do this on
your version.  Generally, any command that does nothing and generates output
starting with a blank line can be used in place of the echo.  ("vol" is a
good choice, but it does cause a little extra disk access.)

Also note that since this uses pipes, you must be able to write into the 
current directory (won't work if you are on a read-only floppy).

Mark Armbrust
maa@nbires.nbi.com
maa@nbires.UUCP