In a batch file, how would I check if today's date is after a set date?

Question

I'm trying to check if today's date is after a certain date so that I can make a batch file that will only run after a certain date.

Right now I have:

@ECHO off
IF %date% GTR 24/01/2015(
ECHO it is after 24/01/2015
)
pause

But that doesn't work.

Solution 1

In order to compare the dates you need to strip out the individual components of the current date and then put them back together into a comparable format (YYYY-MM-DD):

@ECHO OFF

SET FirstDate=2015-01-24

REM These indexes assume %DATE% is in format:
REM   Abr MM/DD/YYYY - ex. Sun 01/25/2015
SET TodayYear=%DATE:~10,4%
SET TodayMonth=%DATE:~4,2%
SET TodayDay=%DATE:~7,2%

REM Construct today's date to be in the same format as the FirstDate.
REM Since the format is a comparable string, it will evaluate date orders.
IF %TodayYear%-%TodayMonth%-%TodayDay% GTR %FirstDate% (
    ECHO Today is after the first date.
) ELSE (
    ECHO Today is on or before the first date.
)

Solution 2

@if (@X)==(@Y) @end /* JScript comment
    @echo off
    set "comp_date=2015/1/20"
    rem :: the first argument is the script name as it will be used for proper help message
    for /f %%# in ('cscript //E:JScript //nologo "%~f0" "%comp_date%"') do set comp=%%#

    if %comp% EQU -1 (
        echo current date is bigger than %comp_date%
    ) else (
        echo current date is less than %comp_date%
    )

    exit /b %errorlevel%

@if (@X)==(@Y) @end JScript comment */

var ARGS = WScript.Arguments;
var compdate=ARGS.Item(0);

var c_date=(new Date()).getTime();
var comp_date=(new Date(compdate)).getTime();
//WScript.Echo(c_date);
//WScript.Echo(comp_date);
WScript.Echo(comp_date<c_date);

Comments

[TT.]

I tried this one, didn't work real well. I did get it to work however with taking the right 10 characters of %DATE% first, then doing the year, month and day stripping. So first SET f=%DATE%, then SET dt=%f:~-10% and then working on dt to strip the year, month and day fields.