How can I automatically add the date to the output PDF file name?

Question

Currently when I generate a PDF file of my document, it produces the name

document1.pdf

I'd like to set it so that it adds the current date (or the date produced by \date{\today}), such as

document1_March_15_2019.pdf

or however it may produce the date. Is there a method to do that? The closest I found was this link but I'm not using an emac or pdftex, I think. I am using TexMaker on a Mac OS Mojave.

The command \date{\today} is a LaTeX command that will get its value during compilation from the TeX distro (for example TeX Live or MacTeX) that your TeXmaker is using. So, TeXmaker will never see this output of this command but will just let it printed in your pdf document via your TeX distro. So, try to find out if texmaker have available in a variable the current date and add this variable before the .pdf extension in your TeXmaker options at the output filename. — koleygr, Mar 15 '19 at 16:35
the pdf is made by latex (not texmaker) and is just the filename of your source file with .tex changed to .pdf so if you save the file as hs-nebula.tex then the generated file will be hs-nebula.pdf document1 is presumably just a default file name if you start a blank file without saving it to a specific name (although I don't use texmaker to be sure) — David Carlisle, Mar 15 '19 at 16:35

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-15T16:49:14.657

5

For editors that execute commands in a bash-based shell, you can modify the preferences of your editor to compile with

mydate=$(date +'%B_%d_%Y') ; pdflatex --jobname="document1_$mydate" %.tex

This will generate a pdf called document1_March_15_2019.pdf

edited Mar 15 '19 at 16:49

answered Mar 15 '19 at 16:36

samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz

158,329

1

Nice (+1)... I suggest an edit to remove the TeXmaker tag and the TeXmaker from the title to make the question/answer just specific to the OS (Linux/Mac) and not to the editor – koleygr Mar 15 '19 at 16:43
@koleygr Feel free to edit – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Mar 15 '19 at 16:47
Just to clarify, do I add this to the PdfLaTeX box in texmaker >> Preferences or is this a user command? – m13op22 Mar 15 '19 at 16:50
Was commenting to ask the OP... but he did it before my question... – koleygr Mar 15 '19 at 16:51
@HS-nebula You can do it either way. If you want to compile all your documents like this, you could directly modify the pdflatex preferences, if you only want to use it occasionally, a separate command might be better. – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Mar 15 '19 at 16:52
An alias could be useful to as additional info (if it works for mac too) – koleygr Mar 15 '19 at 16:53
Okay, makes sense, but then is there a default variable for document1? Would it just be --jobname="$DOCNAME_$mydate" then? (assuming this is done in the pdflatex preferences) – m13op22 Mar 15 '19 at 16:55
This is a great answer but I'm just confused about where exactly to type this in the pdflatex preferences. – m13op22 Mar 15 '19 at 21:53

How can I automatically add the date to the output PDF file name?

1 Answers1