You got it, that was it. Thanks, Martin.

I wondered...I'll bet you nailed it there. Testing now.

So it is Windows interpreter (cmd.exe). I was trying it directly. When I issue the command via interpreter, it treats & as command separator. You must see an error message saying "xxx is not recognised as as internal or external command ...", where xxx is part after the '&'. Do you? Its enough to enclose the /log value in quotes:

It's called from a batch file like this:
WinSCP3.exe /script=c:\scripts\FiletoIntermediary.txt /log=c:\scripts\File_retrieved.log

My hope is to append month and day to File_retrieved.log

How do you run WinSCP? I would suspect some interpreter to remove the &? patterns before running WinSCP.

If I issue /log=d:\&d.log, no log is written and no error message is issued

If I issue /log=d:\test&d.log it writes a log file named test and no error message is issued.

rmcree wrote:

it does not write the log file or offer an error message.

So it changes? Sometimes it does not write a log file and sometimes it shows an error? What is the error message? Please try to give more details.

If I run:
WinSCP3.exe /script=c:\scripts\script.txt /log=c:\test.log
it works perfectly.
If I run:
WinSCP3.exe /script=c:\scripts\script.txt /log=d:\&d.log
or
WinSCP3.exe /script=c:\scripts\script.txt /log=d:\&d_test.log
it does not write the log file or offer an error message.

It works for me. What does it mean "it failes"? Any error message? Does it work at least with my simple example?

So I've been trying something like this:
WinSCP3.exe /log=d:\logname&d&m.log but it fails.
So I assume the name must be either all aribitrary text or all patterns, but not mixed?

Martin,

Would you post some examples of syntax utilizing &Y (year), &M (month), &D (day), &T (time), &H (hostname), &S (session name) patterns for log file naming conventions?
I'm using 3.81 and am use the /log parameter but can't get the patterns to work for me.