Hello everybody.

I have an issue trying to write a batch script and I hope you will be ABLE to point me to the right direction.

First of all, I am brand new to batch scripting, and I had to "learn" it just today because I have to do something special with filenames.

Here is the context :

I have xls files which filenames are containing a date. The filenames are like this syntax : 20071107_SOMETHING.xls

I must be able to extract only the date from the filename, get it to a correct format (e.g 2007/11/07) and put it in a text file.

I get through this site to learn the basics and this is what I was able to write for the time being :

Code: [Select]@echo off
for /f "tokens=1-2 delims=_" %%d in ('dir /b folder') do rename "test.txt" %%d.txt
set filename=%%d
echo yass %filename% >> date.txt
pause
In this simple script, I have a folder (named folder) containing only one xls file. The 'dir /b' command returns me the correct filename. From there I use the for loop to extract only the date (20071107), and for testing purpose I rename a test.txt file just to verify that I am extracting the good string.

This part is working !

But, in the next part, I tried to get the date into a variable %filename and then write to the date.txt file. But this is not working at all, I have something empty instead.... I guess I am doing something wrong and that's why I'm asking for advice.

So what I want to do is getting this date that I extracted and simply put it into a txt file. It would be great if I could also put '/' to form a correct date format...

Thank you for any help !
I think you probably want something like:
Code: [Select]@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
for /f "tokens=1-2 delims=_" %%d in ('dir /b folder') do (
rename "test.txt" %%d.txt
set filename=%%d
echo yass !filename:~0,4!/!filename:~4,2!/!filename:~6,2! >> date.txt
)
pauseThank you GuruGary !

That helped me a lot, even for understanding Batch scripting.

But I have some questions about what you wrote, and If you can give me answers or point to the direction of somewhere where I cand find the information, I will be grateful.

- I understood that in my first try I was using a variable name outside the for loop, so it wasn't recognized... but, now I'm wondering why are you using the '!' before each variable name I first thought it was some SORT of escape character (I was thinking it was ^ actually...) but it looks a bit more complicated, could you TELL me more about the use of the '!' character.

- Could you also please tell me what is the UTILITY of ':~', or indicate where I can find information about it. It looks like an assignment operator , is that right ?


Anyway, thanks for your answer and your help.

I'm still working on my batch script for 2 days now, I'm learning so I'm not doing very fast but I hope I'll be able to finish it correctly.

Bye all !

P.S : sorry if my english is not perfect...Quote

could you tell me more about the use of the '!' character.

tell me what is the utility of ':~'

Quote

tell me what is the utility of ':~'

Well, to my understanding, it is used to extract certain parts of a set variable, like so:

Code: [Select]set numbers=12345
echo %numbers:~2,4%

Would output 234

However the

Code: [Select]:~2,4

represents characters 2 through 4 in that string.