Question

I am attempting to create a batch for loop (Windows XP and newer command prompts) that iterates through a string containing one or more asterisks. How can I do this? Here is an example:

@FOR %%A IN (A* B) DO @ECHO %%A

The expected output (what I am trying to get) is the following:

A*  
B

However, what I am actually getting with the command above is B and only B. For some reason, everything with an asterisk is being ignored by the loop. I have attempted escaping the asterisk with 1-4 carets (^), backslashes (\), percent signs (%), and other asterisks (*), all to no avail. Thanks in advance for illuminating me.

IN CASE YOU WANT MORE INFORMATION:

The purpose of this is to parse a path out of a list of space-separated partial paths. For example, I want to copy C:\Bar\A.txt, C:\Bar\B.txt, and C:\Bar\C*.txt to C:\Foo\ using the following approach:

@SET FILE_LIST=A B C*  
@FOR %%A IN (%FILE_LIST%) DO @COPY C:\Bar\%%A.txt C:\Foo\

If there is another alternative way to do this (preferably without typing each and every copy command since there are ~200 files, which is the same reason I don’t want to store the full path for every file), I would appreciate the help. Thanks again,

-Jeff

Answer 1

This may help:

@echo off
set "it=a*b .txt-b*.txt-c*.txt-d.txt"
set /a i=0,fn=3
:startLoop
set /a i=i+1
for /f "tokens=%i%delims=-" %%m in ("%it%") do echo %%m
if %i% lss %fn% goto:startLoop