Philip TAYLOR writes:

David Kastrup wrote:

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Have you actually programmed any serious batch scripts under Windows?

Yes, many : after leaving VMS (a forced migration, not my choice) I have worked only with Windows. Probably the key to success is a familiarity with the HELP system :

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In addition, substitution of FOR variable references has been enhanced. You can now use the following optional syntax:

%~I - expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (") %~fI - expands %I to a fully qualified path name %~dI - expands %I to a drive letter only %~pI - expands %I to a path only %~nI - expands %I to a file name only %~xI - expands %I to a file extension only %~sI - expanded path contains short names only %~aI - expands %I to file attributes of file %~tI - expands %I to date/time of file %~zI - expands %I to size of file %~$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH environment variable and expands %I to the fully qualified name of the first one found. If the environment variable name is not defined or the file is not found by the search, then this modifier expands to the empty string

The modifiers can be combined to get compound results:

%~dpI - expands %I to a drive letter and path only %~nxI - expands %I to a file name and extension only %~fsI - expands %I to a full path name with short names only %~dp$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH environment variable for %I and expands to the drive letter and path of the first one found. %~ftzaI - expands %I to a DIR like output line

In the above examples %I and PATH can be replaced by other valid values. The %~ syntax is terminated by a valid FOR variable name. Picking upper case variable names like %I makes it more readable and avoids confusion with the modifiers, which are not case sensitive.

It must be mentioned that one actually needs single-iteration for-loops for almost any useful variable manipulation. Quite intuitive.

Also very useful is Log Parser 2.2 (which does far far more than parsing log files !) and, of course, Perl.

Perl is not exactly creditable to Windows now, is it? -- David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum