replacing a string within a file using dos commands

good point K_2K.
But why reinvent the wheel...
Look here: http:Q_20428851.html
This should take care of what you need.
If not, post back.  Good luck!

Yupper, indeed,  that's the way i was thinnin' about goin'

Takes a few seconds to write a  
     set line=%line:oldpath=newone%
that correctly handles the target line to be changed,

Takes a few hours to try to handle blank lines getting lost in the FOR,  lines with spaces getting changed to "ECHO is OFF",  lines with > getting dropped with parts of them appended to a file somewhere, and the list of maladies goes on.  


WELLL,  

Here's an old VB replace I wrote that may be a bit better.  The batch sets up a VB script on the fly that is a general purpose replace function that has much less problem with special characters.  The type that should have been included as a utility in DOS 2.3 but wasn't.
M¢ wants us to change intirely to VB script so they can yank it out from under our feet with .net and force us to buy Visual Stud - - -  oops,  I digress.

Then the VB script can be called as often as needed in a script to to do the actual work of several replacements.  It's in the form of a filter, like DOS's "SORT" except i gave it NO support for passing it arguments for input or output file.  You must redirect a file as input to it, or use type or more and pipe the result to it.  You can read output on the screen or you can redirect output to a file or pipe it to another replace command.  

Enjoy,
2K
(\o/)


:: replace.cmd
@echo off
:: Use VB to search and replace strings in a file
:: syntax of scrupt created is

:: setup variables for the batch
setlocal
set vbscript=%temp%\~%~n0.vbs
set vbreplace=cscript /NoLogo "%vbscript%"

::write 2 line script (1 line pluss comment) - only need be done once
>"%vbscript%" echo ' replace.vbs  temporary script for %0
>"%vbscript%" echo Wscript.StdOut.Write Replace(WScript.StdIn.ReadAll, Wscript.arguments(0), Wscript.arguments(1))


:: Continue with script as normal, using vbreplace as often as you like
:: syntax of VB replace:
:: <"file to run replace on.txt" %vbreplace% "oldstring to find" "new string to replace it with"
::
:: you also can pipe the output of one vbreplace to the input of another to do multiple search and replace functions without needing multiple temporary files.


:: here's line for david:  I put redirects before the command to avoid DOS space perception problems
<"c:\program files\mydir\my.ini" >"c:\program files\mydir\my_new.ini" %vbreplace% "%%mypath%%" "%%yourpath%%"
:: from input file ^                          to file ^                                         command ^     findstring ^               replace with ^