Windows command-line: create a file with the current date in its name

You can replace symbols in variables by using :

set _date=%DATE:/=-%

I have posted an answer to a very similar question here. The spltting of the date in fields is done in 1 line, instead of several lines in harrymc's answer.

The interesting part is:

@echo off
for /F "tokens=2-4 delims=/ " %%i in ('date /t') do set yyyymmdd=%%k%%j%%i
echo Date: %yyyymmdd%

And the warning is still relevant:

Warning: the format of the date (yyyymmdd=%%k%%j%%i) depends on your regional settings. Because I use the French date format (dd/mm/yyyy), I have to use "%%k%%j%%i" as the format (%%i = day, %%j = month, %%j = year).

If your regional settings are set to US style (mm/dd/yyyy), you should use "%%k%%i%%j" (%%i = month, %%j = day, %%j = year).

I always use:

For /f "tokens=1,2,3,4,5 delims=/. " %%a in ('date/T') do set CDate=%%a%%b%%c%%d

Then CDate will be Sat02182012. If you want to make it more sortable set CDate to %%d-%%b-%%c so it will be 2012-02-18

For /f "tokens=1,2 delims=:" %%f in ('time /t') do set CTime=%%f%%g

To make date and time folder/file friendly.