In trying to run this on my test workstation - WinXP, I ran your script as is. It did not work so I attempted to run this line by line. When running the line “Call :LogEntry “Starting %0″” from the Windows command line, the following error message appeared: “Invalid attempt to call batch label outside of batch script”

Have I missed something with this?

@echo off
::LogEntryDemo.bat
REM Jeffery Hicks   <a href="mailto:jhicks@sapien.com" title="mailto:jhicks@sapien.com">jhicks at sapien.com</a>
REM This script doesn’t really do much other than demonstrate
REM how to use the LogEntry routine to create a
REM log file with a timestamped entry for each line.

REM define path to log file
set myLog=e:templog.txt

REM Delete the logfile if it already exists.
if exist %myLog% del %myLog% >NUL

Echo Working…
REM When sending something to the log routine, enclose the
REM message in quotes.
Call :LogEntry “Starting %0″
Call :LogEntry “Running DIR”
DIR %windir%*.* /s >NUL
Call :LogEntry “Finished DIR”
Call :LogEntry “Sleeping for 30 seconds”
Sleep 30
Call :logEntry “Getting NETSTAT information”
REM Sending results of a NETSTAT command to the log. Notice
REM I’m enclosing the output in quotes. Otherwise, only the
REM first part of the output would be recorded.
for /f “tokens=*” %%t in (’netstat ^|find /i “TCP”‘) do @Call :LogEntry “%%t”
Call :LogEntry “Finishing logging and opening %myLog%”
REM Display the log
start Notepad %MyLog%
GOTO :EOF

:LogEntry
REM Output will be like: Wed 11/15/2006 05:27 PM “Starting LogEntryDemo.bat”
for /f “tokens=*” %%i in (’date /t’) do @for /f “tokens=*” %%j in (’time /t’) do @echo %%i%%j %1 >>%myLog%
GOTO :EOF

:EOF

This works well to timestamp log entries.

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Is there a way to do a simple command to copy a file (using any tool/app) that will create a simple entry in a log file to have a single line item for that file stating Date, Time, Filename, destination directory. If we can write the log file cleanly, there should be little to no post parsing of the log file needed.

C:\Utilities\robocopy C:\TEMP\PageSorting C:\TEMP\PagesSent na*.pdf /R:3 /W:3 /MOV /NP /NS /IS /FP /NDL /LOG+:C:\Temp\TodaysPages.log

Once you have the log, you can strip information out as required with a for loop and the various string utilities (findstr, find, grep). Example:

FOR /F “tokens=3″ %a IN (’findstr /i /r “[a-zA-Z0-9].cmd” C:\Temp\TodaysPages.log’) DO @ECHO %a>>C:\Temp\_MySrt.lst

You can also strip out date and time stamps using a for loop and filter them into your results.

You can also use the build in DATE and TIME variables to manually flag you log file.

My current syntax is
Robocopy:
C:Utilitiesrobocopy C:TEMPPageSorting C:TEMPPagesSent na*.pdf /R:3 /W:3 /MOV /NP /NS /IS /FP /NDL /NJH /NJS >>TodaysPages.log

XCopy
date /T >>C:TEMPTodaysPages.log
time /T >>C:TEMPTodaysPages.log
xcopy C:TEMPna*.pdf C:TEMPPagesSent /C /Y >>TodaysPages.log

 <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/bill/archive/2009/02/13/file.aspx" title="http://blogs.msdn.com/bill/archive/2009/02/13/file.aspx" target="_blank">http://blogs.msdn.com/bill/archive/2009/…</a>

Can you give an example of your copy and what a log filename should look like?

Adding the date time into a file name is covered by alot of people, here is one example: