Question

I tried to list all files and directories on a directory by using this format

dir1:::dir2:::file1:::file2:::

To achieve this, I wrote a batch script. Take a look at it :

    @echo off
    SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
    SET M=
    FOR %%d IN ('dir /B') DO SET M=!M!%%d:::
    ECHO %M%

Well, it works for directories/files that doesn’t contain spaces, but for those that contained it, it will show just the first word.
For example, suppose the files are “Blue hills.jpg” and “Sunset.jpg”.

The expected result is of course

Blue hills.jpg:::Sunset.jpg:::

But what appears instead is

Blue:::Sunset.jpg

FYI, I use WinXP. *Is that matter? I’ve tried to put quotes in “%%d” but it doesn’t work. How can I fix this?
Thanks for the help! And sorry for my bad english, I really have to improve it..

Answer 1

You need to run your for loop for file names containing any text (spaces included) "tokens=*". The /f switch is to search for text (filename text).

@echo off
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
SET M=
FOR /f "tokens=*" %%d IN ('dir /B') DO SET M=!M!%%d:::

ECHO %M%

Works for files and directories with spaces.

If you use tokens=1 then you get the first word of each file name (using a space as separator). So you would see

Blue:::Sunset.jpg:::

If you use tokens=2 then you get the second word:

hills.jpg:::