There are two problems that people commonly report when attempting
to run Fdate under Windows NT (and its derivatives, Win2000 and
Windows XP). One is that they run out of environment space. The
other is that the /V parm does not work, and Fdate's output is not
being put into an environment variable. These problems will apply
to all versions of NT, including NT 4.0, Window2000, and XP.
/V DOES NOT WORK
The bottom line is that Fdate's /V feature doesn't work under Windows
NT, 2k, or XP. Microsoft never made it easy to access the environment
programmatically, and the situation became worse in Windows NT, to the
point where TurboPower Software, which markets add-on utilities,
withdrew support for utilities that change environment variables. Since
Fdate uses these utilities, Fdate's /V feature will not work under NT, 2k, or XP.
This does not mean, however, that Fdate can't be used with those
operating systems. What it means is that we have to fall back on a
more basic method of setting an environment variable. This
involves creating a temporary batch file that sets the variable,
then running and deleting the batch file.
CALL A BATCH FILE
The most basic way to put Fdate's output into an environment variable,
is to:
- use the /P (prefix string) feature to create a DOS "SET" statement,
- redirect the output to a batch file, and then
- call the batch file.
Fdate /Ff /At /Occyymmdd /P"@SET Fdate=" >JUNKTEMP.BAT
call JUNKTEMP.BAT
del JUNKTEMP.BAT
In this example, the result will be that the Fdate environment variable
is set to today's date, in ccyymmdd format.
You might also want to investigate a utility called XSET.
see TOPIC Xset - A Utility For Creating Environment Variables Under NT, Win2k, XP