now.exe

Now displays the current date and time on STDOUT, followed by any command-line arguments you add. Now is similar to the MS-DOS ECHO command, but with a timestamp. The tool is useful for logging times from .bat or .cmd files in order to track progress.

STDOUT = Standard output

Redirecting command output (>)
Almost all commands send output to Command Prompt window. Even commands that send output to a drive or printer display messages and prompts in the Command Prompt window.
To redirect command output from the Command Prompt window to a file or device, use the > operator. This operator can be used with most commands. For example, to redirect dir output to Dirlist.txt:
dir>dirlist.txt
If Dirlist.txt does not exist, Cmd.exe creates it. If Dirlist.txt exists, Cmd.exe replaces the information in the file with the output from the dir command.
To run the netsh routing dump command and then send the command output to Route.cfg, type:
netsh routing dump>c:\route.cfg
The > operator opens the specified file with write-only access. As a result, you cannot read the file when you use this operator. For example, if you start a program with redirection >&0, all attempts to write handle 1 fail because handle 0 is initially opened with read-only access.