Question

I’m writing a build script, and if the directory the user’s building the script contains spaces, everything falls apart. To go around that, I thought of using 8.3 filenames so that drive:\Documents and setttings\whatever becomes drive:\Docume~1\whatever . The current directory can be found by querying the environment variable %CD%.

How do I transform %CD% into a short file path?

Answer 1

for %f in ("%cd%") do @echo %~sf

Edit: don’t forget to use %% if you are using it in batch file. like this

for %%f in ("%cd%") do @echo %%~sf

On my machine:

C:\Users\preet>cd "\Program Files"
C:\Program Files>for %f in ("%cd%") do @echo %~sf
C:\PROGRA~1

Other options:

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