I am currently trying to delete a variable from a batch file which is in a text file
e.g. delete %variable%
where %variable% = "test"
So the batch script would delete the instance of "test" in the specified text file
Can this be done?
#echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set variable=test
for /f "delims=" %%l in (foo.txt) do (
set "line=%%f"
echo !line:%variable%=!
)
To avoid potential special character issues with the string you are searching for, it may be better to just call findstr directly like this:
type input.txt | findstr /b /e /v "remove_line" > input_without_remove_line.txt
/b and /e together will only match if the "remove_line" is the only text on a line. /v will switch the output to only print all lines that do not match.
If you are sure you're not passing special characters, it is pretty easy to wrap that in a small batch and replace remove line with %1 or %* to use your passed parameters.
Unfortunately, you will need to use a temporary file - replacing the file in place doesn't work with the DOS output redirection.
If you were wanting to delete all instances of a specified word within any line, batch and findstr are probably not the way to do it. Look at sed, which can do much more and is freely available. If you can't install another utility, even vbscript using cscript would be a better way to do this than batch.
Related
I want to create a batch file able to apply some processing on each JPG file in a folder hierarchy. The following script file works very well for that case (here I only echo the name of each file, but this should be replaced by some more complex statements in the real application):
:VERSION 1
#echo off
set "basefolder=C:\Base"
for /r %basefolder% %%f in (*.jpg) do echo %%f
Actually, I don't want to explore all the folder hierarchy under %basefolder%, but only a given list of subfolders. This modified script is able to deal with that case :
:VERSION 2
#echo off
set "basefolder=C:\Base"
set "subfolders=A B C"
for %%s in (%subfolders%) do (
pushd %basefolder%\%%~s"
for /r %%f in (*.jpg) do echo %%f
popd
)
Is there a solution to remove the pushd/popd pair of statements, to get something closer to the initial script. I thought that one of the following scripts would do the job:
:VERSION 3
#echo off
set "basefolder=C:\Base"
set "subfolders=A B C"
for %%s in (%subfolders%) do (
for /r %basefolder%\%%~s" %%f in (*.jpg) do echo %%f
)
or, using delayed expansion:
:VERSION 4
#echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set "basefolder=C:\Base"
set "subfolders=A B C"
for %%s in (%subfolders%) do (
set "folder=%basefolder%\%%~s"
echo !folder!
for /r !folder! %%f in (*.jpg) do echo %%f
)
but none of them is working. When running the second one, the echo !folder! command in the external loop shows C:\Base\A, C:\Base\B and C:\Base\C as expected, but the inner loop doesn't echo any JPG file, so I guess that the recursive for /r command does not run correctly.
What am I doing wrong ?
Final edit after answers :
Thanks to #aschipfl who provided a link to the answer posted by #jeb on another question, quoted below:
The options of FOR, IF and REM are only parsed up to the special character phase. Or better the commands are detected in the special character phase and a different parser is activated then. Therefore it's neither possible to use delayed expansion nor FOR meta-variables in these options.
In other words, my versions 3 and 4 do not work because when defining the root folder of the FOR /R command, neither the %%~s nor the !folder! are correctly expanded by the expression parser. There is no way to change that, as this is a parser limitation. As I said in a comment below: the root folder option in the FOR /R command is basically only syntactic sugar to avoid the use of pushd/popd before and after the command. As this syntactic sugar is incomplete, we have to stick to the original syntax for some specific use cases, as the one presented here. The alternatives proposed by #Gerhard (using a subroutine CALL) or by #Mofi (parsing the result of a DIR command) are working, but they are neither more readable nor more efficient than the simple pushd/popd version I proposed initially.
My Approach for this would be really straight forward:
#echo off
set "basedir=C:\Base"
set "subfolders="A","B","C""
for %%i in (%subfolders%) do for /R "%basedir%" %%a in ("%%~i\*.jpg") do echo %%~fa
The double quotes inside of the subfolders variable is important here, it will ensure that folder names with whitespace are not seen as separators for the folder names. For instance:
set "subfolders="Folder A","Folder B","Folder C""
Edit
#echo off
set "basedir=C:\Base"
set "subfolders="A","B","C""
for %%i in (%subfolders%) do call :work "%%~i"
goto :eof
:work
for /R "%basedir%\%~1" %%a in (*.jpg) do echo %%~fa
It is in general not advisable to assign the value of a loop variable to an environment variable and next use the environment variable unmodified without or with concatenation with other strings being coded in batch file or defined already above the FOR loop within body of a FOR loop. That causes just problems as it requires the usage of delayed expansion which results in files and folders with one or more ! are not correct processed anymore inside body of the FOR loop caused by double parsing of the command line before execution, or command call is used on some command lines, or a subroutine is used called with call which makes the processing of the batch file much slower.
I recommend to use this batch file for the task:
#echo off
setlocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion
set "basefolder=C:\Base"
set "subfolders=A B C "Subfolder D" SubfolderE"
for %%I in (%subfolders%) do for /F "delims=" %%J in ('dir "%basefolder%\%%~I\*.jpg" /A-D /B /S 2^>nul') do echo %%J
endlocal
The inner FOR loop starts for each subfolder defined in subfolders in background one more command process with %ComSpec% /c and the DIR command line appended as additional arguments. So executed is with Windows installed to C:\Windows for example for the first subfolder:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /c dir "C:\Base\A\*.jpg" /A-D /B /S 2>nul
The command DIR searches
in specified directory C:\Base\A and all it subdirectories because of option /S
for files because of option /A-D (attribute not directory) including those with hidden attribute set
matching the pattern *.jpg in long or short file name
and outputs to handle STDOUT of background command process just the matching file names because of option /B (bare format)
with full path because of option /S.
The error message output by DIR on nothing found matching these criteria is redirecting from handle STDERR to device NUL to suppress it.
Read the Microsoft documentation about Using command redirection operators for an explanation of 2>nul. The redirection operator > must be escaped with caret character ^ on FOR command line to be interpreted as literal character when Windows command interpreter processes this command line before executing command FOR which executes the embedded dir command line with using a separate command process started in background.
The output to handle STDOUT of background command process is captured by FOR respectively the command process which is processing the batch file. FOR processes the captured output line by line after started cmd.exe terminated itself. This is very often very important. The list of files to process is already in memory of command process before processing the first file name. This is not the case on using for /R as this results in accessing file system, getting first file name of a non-hidden file matching the wildcard pattern, run all commands in body of FOR and accessing the file system once again to get next file name. The for /R approach is problematic if the commands in body of FOR change a file to process like deleting, moving, modifying, copying it in same folder, or renaming a found file because of the entries in file system changes while for /R is iterating over these entries. That can easily result in some files are skipped or some files are processed more than once and it could result also an endless running loop, especially on FAT file system like FAT32 or exFAT. It is never good to iterate over a list of files on which the list changes on each iteration.
Command FOR on usage of /F ignores empty lines which do not occur here. A non-empty line is split up into substrings using a normal space and a horizontal tab as string delimiters by default. This line splitting behavior is not wanted here as there could be full qualified file names containing anywhere inside full name one or more spaces. For that reason delims= is used to define an empty list of delimiters which disables the line splitting behavior.
FOR with option /F would also ignore lines on which first substring starts with ; which is the default end of line character. This is no problem here because of command DIR was used with option /S and so each file name is output with full path which makes it impossible that any file name starts with ;. So the default eol=; can be kept.
FOR with option /F assigns by default just first substring to specified loop variable as tokens=1 is the default. This default can be kept here as splitting the lines (full file names) into substrings is disabled already with delims= and so there is always the full file name assigned to the loop variable.
This example uses just echo %%I to output the file names with full path. But it is now safe to replace this single command by a command block which does more with the JPEG files because of the list of JPEG files for each specified subfolder tree in base folder is always already completely in memory of command process processing the batch file.
This question already has an answer here:
At which point does `for` or `for /R` enumerate the directory (tree)?
(1 answer)
Closed 3 years ago.
I can add a prefix to a series of text files using:
:: rename files
for %%a in (*.txt) do (
ren "%%a" "Seekret file %%a"
:: ECHO %%a Seekret file %%a
)
which will turn
a.txt
b.txt
c.txt
into
Seekret file a.txt
Seekret file b.txt
Seekret file c.txt
However, the above code seems to rename the first file twice with the prefix. I end up with
Seekret file Seekret file a.txt
and I have no idea why. Any ideas?
Use
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir /b /a-d *.txt') do (
What is happening is that the version you are using sees the renamed-file as a new file. The dir version builds a list of the filenames and then executes the for on each line, so the list is already built and static and cmd isn't trying to operate on a moving target.
Also - use rem, not :: within a code-block (parenthesised sequence of instructions) as this form of comment is in fact a broken label and labels are not allowed in a code block.
Yes, this can happen, especially on FAT32 and exFAT drives because of these file systems do not return the list of directory entries matched by a wildcard pattern to calling executable in an alphabetic order. for processes the directory entries matching *.txt one after the other and the command ren results in changing the directory entries, i.e. the file names list is modified while iterating over it.
The solution is using:
for /F "eol=| delims=" %%I in ('dir *.txt /A-D /B 2^>nul') do ren "%%I" "Seekret file %%I"
FOR runs in this case in background %ComSpec% /c with the command line specified between ' which means with Windows installed into directory C:\Windows:
C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C dir *.txt /A-D /B 2>nul
So one more command process is started in background which executes DIR which
searches in current directory
just for files because of option /A-D (attribute not directory)
including files with hidden attribute set (use /A-D-H to exclude hidden files)
matching the wildcard pattern *.txt
and outputs in bare format just the file names because of option /B.
An error message output by DIR to handle STDERR in case of not finding any directory entry matching these criteria is suppressed by redirecting it to device NUL.
Read the Microsoft article about Using Command Redirection Operators for an explanation of 2>nul. The redirection operator > must be escaped with caret character ^ on FOR command line to be interpreted as literal character when Windows command interpreter processes this command line before executing command FOR which executes the embedded dir command line with using a separate command process started in background.
The file names without path are output by DIR to handle STDOUT of background command process. This output is captured by FOR respectively the command process executing the batch file.
After started command process terminated itself, FOR processes the captured list of file names. All changes done on directory during the loop iterations do not matter anymore for that reason. The file names list does not change anymore.
The options eol=| delims= are needed to get the complete file names assigned one after the other to loop variable I even on starting with ; or containing a space character. eol=| redefines default end of line character ; to a vertical bar which no file name can contain. delims= defines an empty list of delimiters to disable default line splitting behavior on normal spaces and horizontal tabs.
Note: :: is an invalid label and not a comment. Labels inside a command block are not allowed and usually result in undefined behavior on execution of the command block. Use command REM (remark) for a comment.
Even better would be:
for /F "eol=| delims=" %%I in ('dir *.txt /A-D /B 2^>nul ^| %SystemRoot%\System32\findstr.exe /B /I /L /V /C:"Seekret file "') do ren "%%I" "Seekret file %%I"
FINDSTR is used here to output from list of file names output by DIR and redirected to STDIN of FINDSTR all file names which
do not because of /V (inverted result)
begin because of option /B
case-insensitive because of option /I
with the literally interpreted because of option /L (redundant to /C:)
string Seekret file .
Option /C: is needed to specify the search string containing two spaces as using just "Seekret file" would result in searching literally and case-insensitive for either Seekret OR file at begin of a line. In a search string specified with just "..." each space is interpreted by FINDSTR as an OR expression like | in a Perl regular expression string.
A search string specified with /C: is interpreted implicitly as literal string, but with using /R (instead of /L) it would be possible to get this string interpreted as regular expression string on which a space is interpreted as space and not as OR expression. It is possible to specify multiple search strings using multiple times /C:.
My recommendation on using FINDSTR: Use always either /L or /R to make it clear for FINDSTR and for every reader of the command line how FINDSTR should interpret the search string(s) specified with "..." or with /C:"...".
I guess I'll throw my hat in too, since I'm not really a fan of looping through dir output and no one else is currently accounting for this script already having been run:
#echo off
set "dir=C:\Your\Root\Directory"
set "pfx=Seekret file "
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
for /r "%dir%" %%A in (*.txt) do (
set "txt=%%~nA"
if not "!txt:~0,13!"=="%pfx%" ren "%%A" "%pfx%%%~nxA"
)
pause
for /r will loop recursively through all .txt files, set each one as parameter %%A (per iteration), set a variable txt as parameter %%A reduced to just its name (%%~nA), and then it compares the first 13 characters of the text file to your example prefix (which is 13 characters long when you include the space: Seekret file) - if they match the loop does nothing; if they do not match, the loop will rename %%A to include the prefix at the beginning. If you don't want it to be recursive, you can use for %%A in ("%dir%"\*.txt) do ( instead. Other than that, you'll just change !txt:~0,13! depending on what your prefix is or how many letters into a filename you want to check. You also don't have to set your directory and prefix variables, I just prefer to do so because it makes the block look cleaner - and it's easier to go back and change one value as opposed to every place that value occurs in a script.
Reference: for /r, ren, variable substrings
I am trying to find last line in a text file using the regex ^.*\z, it's working fine in notepad++ but when I try it in cmd using findstr /R "^.*^Z" file.txt not working.
Open a command prompt window and run findstr /?. The output help explains what FINDSTR supports. The regular expression feature is limited in FINDSTR. It does not support all the features as supported by Boost Perl Regular Expression library used by many text editors in various versions.
This batch code could be used to get last non empty line from a file assigned to an environment variable:
#echo off
setlocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion
set "LastLine="
if exist "file.txt" for /F "usebackq eol= delims=" %%# in ("file.txt") do set "LastLine=%%#"
echo Last line is: "%LastLine%"
endlocal
Command FOR skips all empty lines and by default also all lines starting with a semicolon. For that reason eol= is used to define form-feed control character as end of line. In case of last line of file surely never starts with ; it would be best to remove eol= from the FOR command line.
In case of file to process always has at least X lines, it would make sense to add to the FOR options after usebackq the option skip=X to skip the first X lines of the file for faster processing.
For details on command FOR open a command prompt window and run for /?.
I have a list of files like these:
icone1.gif
icone2.gif
icone1.gif
icone11.gif
icone12.gif
icone13.gif
icone14.gif
icone15.gif
I want to remove 'e' from it so they will icon1.gif, icon2.gif and so on...
I tried this from the DOS Command Prompt:
ren icone*.gif icon*.gif
Didn't work.
Create a batch file in the folder by typing "notepad go.bat" at the command prompt and hitting enter and drop this in then save and exit notepad:
for %%i in ("*.gif") do (set fname=%%i) & call :rename
goto :eof
:rename
::Cuts off 1st five chars, then appends Icon and the remaining chars
ren "%fname%" "Icon%fname:~5%"
goto :eof
Double click the batch file in windows or from the command prompt type go and press enter
See How does the Windows RENAME (REN) command interpret wildcards? for rules that can explain why your command does not work.
Assuming all your file names have a digit after "icone" (really only care that you never have another "e" following "icone"), then the following one liner will work from the command line.
for /f "tokens=1* delims=eE" %A in ('dir /b icone*.gif') do #ren "%Ae%B" "%A%B"
Double up the percents if you put the command within a batch script.
For a really simple and robust solution, use my JREN.BAT regular expression renaming utility, pure script (hybrid JScript/batch) that runs natively on any Windows machine from XP onward.
jren "^(icon)e(.*\.jpg)" "$1$2" /i
Let's say I have a text file, it contains batch commands. How can I run that text file as a batch file from within one, without renaming it. I want too keep a portable aspect too it, so no registry keys or such.
The reason for no renaming is too prevent leftover unrenamed files upon unexpected closure.
The simplest way is this:
cmd < file.txt
As in the previous answers, there are several commands that will not work in this file, like GOTO, SETLOCAL and others. However, multiline nested if and for commands do work as long as for replaceable parameters use just one percent (like in the command-line).
Although this method alaways show in the screen the executed commands (#echo off not works here), you may redirect the output to NUL and in the "Batch" file redirect the desired output to CON. For example, this is test.txt:
#echo off
echo Hello World! > CON
(for /L %a in (1,1,10) do (
echo Turn: %a
if %a equ 4 echo TURN NUMBER FOUR!
)) > CON
Output example:
C:\> cmd < test.txt > NUL
Hello World!
Turn: 1
Turn: 2
Turn: 3
Turn: 4
TURN NUMBER FOUR!
Turn: 5
Turn: 6
Turn: 7
Turn: 8
Turn: 9
Turn: 10
type some.txt>temp.bat
call temp.bat
del /q /f temp.bat
Is creating a temp file cheating?It's not mentioned as restriction in the question.Though you can loose the %ERRORLEVEL% because of the del command , but you can keep it in temp variable:
type some.txt>temp.bat
call temp.bat
set temp_el=%errorlevel%
del /q /f temp.bat
exit /b %temp_el%
I'm pretty sure you cannot do what you want. Windows will not let you configure the OS to recognize any other extensions as batch files. Only .bat and .cmd are supported.
You could process a series of simple commands within a text file using a FOR /F loop, but it will be very restrictive. For example, it will not support IF, FOR, GOTO Label, or CALL :Label. There are probably other restrictions. Within your main batch file, you could have the following:
for /f delims^=^ eol^= %%A in (script.txt) do %%A
You might be able to support IF and/or FOR if you execute the command via a new CMD.EXE shell, but then you cannot preserve the value of variables that might be SET by the command.
for /f delims^=^ eol^= %%A in (script.txt) do cmd /c "%%A"
See the windows shell commands
assoc. Associates a filename extension (e.g. *.txt) with a file type.
ftype. Lets you create a new file type that tells the windows shell how to open a particular kind of file.
From a command prompt, typing assoc /? or ftype /? will get you help on them. Or use your google-fu to find the MS docs.
*.bat is mapped to the file type batfile; *.cmd is mapped to the file type cmdfile. In windows 7 they are identical. If you want to be able to run files named *.foobar as a batch files, just type:
assoc .foobar=cmdfile
Then, assuming a file named 'sillyness.foobar' existing on the path, you just just type
c:\> sillyness
and it will find sillyness.foobar and execute it as a batch file. The Windows shell has a priority for how it resolves conflicts when you have files with the same name and different extensions (.com vs .cmd vs .bat, etc.)
Something like
assoc .pl=perlscript
ftype perlscript=perl.exe %1 %*
will set you up to run perl scripts as if they were .bat files.
If your batch commands are simple sequential ones then you could use this at the command prompt. Double the % signs for use in a batch file.
for /f "delims=" %a in (file.txt) do %a