for/?

Runs a specified command for each file in a set of files.

FOR %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]

%variable Specifies a single letter replaceable parameter.

(set) Specifies a set of one or more files. Wildcards may be used.

command Specifies the command to carry out for each file.

command-parameters

Specifies parameters or switches for the specified command.

To use the FOR command in a batch program, specify %%variable instead

of %variable. Variable names are case sensitive, so %i is different

from %I.

If Command Extensions are enabled, the following additional

forms of the FOR command are supported:

FOR /D %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]

If set contains wildcards, then specifies to match against directory

names instead of file names.

FOR /R [[drive:]path] %variable IN (set) DO command [command-parameters]

Walks the directory tree rooted at [drive:]path, executing the FOR

statement in each directory of the tree. If no directory

specification is specified after /R then the current directory is

assumed. If set is just a single period (.) character then it

will just enumerate the directory tree.

FOR /L %variable IN (start,step,end) DO command [command-parameters]

The set is a sequence of numbers from start to end, by step amount.

So (1,1,5) would generate the sequence 1 2 3 4 5 and (5,-1,1) would

generate the sequence (5 4 3 2 1)

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ('command') DO command [command-parameters]

or, if usebackq option present:

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ('string') DO command [command-parameters]

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (`command`) DO command [command-parameters]

file-set is one or more file names. Each file is opened, read

and processed before going on to the next file in file-set.

Processing consists of reading in the file, breaking it up into

individual lines of text and then parsing each line into zero or

more tokens. The body of the for loop is then called with the

variable value(s) set to the found token string(s). By default, /F

passes the first blank separated token from each line of each file.

Blank lines are skipped. You can override the default parsing

behavior by specifying the optional "options" parameter. This

is a quoted string which contains one or more keywords to specify

different parsing options. The keywords are:

eol=c - specifies an end of line comment character

(just one)

skip=n - specifies the number of lines to skip at the

beginning of the file.

delims=xxx - specifies a delimiter set. This replaces the

default delimiter set of space and tab.

tokens=x,y,m-n - specifies which tokens from each line are to

be passed to the for body for each iteration.

This will cause additional variable names to

be allocated. The m-n form is a range,

specifying the mth through the nth tokens. If

the last character in the tokens= string is an

asterisk, then an additional variable is

allocated and receives the remaining text on

the line after the last token parsed.

usebackq - specifies that the new semantics are in force,

where a back quoted string is executed as a

literal string command and allows the use of

double quotes to quote file names in

file-set.

Some examples might help:

FOR /F "eol=; tokens=2,3* delims=, " %i in (myfile.txt) do @echo %i %j %k

would parse each line in myfile.txt, ignoring lines that begin with

a semicolon, passing the 2nd and 3rd token from each line to the for

body, with tokens delimited by commas and/or spaces. Notice the for

body statements reference %i to get the 2nd token, %j to get the

3rd token, and %k to get all remaining tokens after the 3rd. For

file names that contain spaces, you need to quote the filenames with

double quotes. In order to use double quotes in this manner, you also

need to use the usebackq option, otherwise the double quotes will be

interpreted as defining a literal string to parse.

%i is explicitly declared in the for statement and the %j and %k

are implicitly declared via the tokens= option. You can specify up

to 26 tokens via the tokens= line, provided it does not cause an

attempt to declare a variable higher than the letter 'z' or 'Z'.

Remember, FOR variables are single-letter, case sensitive, global,

and you can't have more than 52 total active at any one time.

You can also use the FOR /F parsing logic on an immediate string, by

making the file-set between the parenthesis a quoted string,

using single quote characters. It will be treated as a single line

of input from a file and parsed.

Finally, you can use the FOR /F command to parse the output of a

command. You do this by making the file-set between the

parenthesis a back quoted string. It will be treated as a command

line, which is passed to a child CMD.EXE and the output is captured

into memory and parsed as if it was a file. So the following

example:
 FOR /F "usebackq delims==" %i IN (`set`) DO @echo %i

would enumerate the environment variable names in the current

environment.

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

In the above examples %I and PATH can be replaced by other valid

values. The %~ syntax is terminated by a valid FOR variable name.

avoids confusion with the modifiers, which are not case sensitive.