Question

I’ve got this little batch file I’m trying to write for a Windows 7 environment. It’s supposed to go through a directory and echo the last four characters of the file names. So far I’ve got:

@ECHO OFF

SETLOCAL
for /r C:\Users\userName\Desktop\testFolder %%g in (*) do (
   Set fileName = %%~ng
   echo %fileName:~-4%
)

And all that is echoed out is “~-4” once for each file in testFolder. I can’t figure out what’s wrong, but then I’m not very well versed in batch files or dos. Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

Environment variable expansion occurs when the command is read, so your %fileName:~-4% is evaulated when the for is read, which is before the Set is performed. Use delayed expansion.

@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL SETDELAYEDEXPANSION
for /r C:\Users\userName\Desktop\testFolder %%g in (*) do (
   Set fileName=%%~ng
   echo !fileName:~-4!
)

Note also that spaces are significant in the Set command. With the space, you created a variable called fileName  with a trailing space.