asked on

Quick question about parsing a string in a batch file

Too lazy at the moment to look it up myself. Can someone give me the batch commands to change a Windows path in a string so it can be used with a Unix command?

I need to parse this LocalPath variable....
SET LocalPath=D:\Folder\Subfolder

So I end up with this assigned to a different variable...
ECHO %UnixPath%
Result: /cygdrive/D/Folder/Subfolder

The word "/cygdrive" will remain constant as the first part of the new string, basically I need to get the drive letter and folders, reverse the \ and remove the colon in as few lines as possible.

Thanks!

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

sirbounty

membership

Create a free account to see this answer

Signing up is free and takes 30 seconds. No credit card required.

See answer

VortexAdmin

ASKER

Excellent! Points are yours. Would you mind briefly explaining why that works? ie. putting :\=/% in the middle of the variable?

Thanks!!

sirbounty

it translates to:
replace this "/" with (=) that "\"
Do remove the colon (:), we replace this ":" with 'nothing'... (%NewPath::=%)

VortexAdmin

ASKER

Oops, I've got an extra space in my variable. I need that variable so I can add another folder (variable) to it. Guess I should have given you exactly what I was doing at the beginning but I was trying to make it as simple as possible.

-- I took what you gave me:
SET LocalPath=D:\Folder\Subfolder
set NewPath=%LocalPath:\=/%
set UnixPath=/cygdrive/%NewPath::=%

-- and changed it to this:
SET LocalPath=D:\Folder\Subfolder
set UnixPath=%LocalPath:\=/%
set UnixPath=/cygdrive/%UnixPath::=%

-- Later in my batch file, I'll need to add another folder variable to the end with a trailing /, we'll call it ClientName. But adding ClientName to the end puts a space in the path. So this:
SET UnixPath=%UnixPath%/%ClientName%
produces this:
/cygdrive/D/Folder/Subfolder /ClientName/

Any way I can get that space out of there? Thanks!

sirbounty

didn't see that in my example.
There's another way of doing it that escapes me at this late hour, but you can still use

SET UnixPath=%UnixPath~:0,-1%/%ClientName%

Which takes the UnixPath variable, starting at char 0 all the way to 1 less than the length...(which should eliminate the space).

VortexAdmin

ASKER

Hmm,

ECHO %UnixPath% produced:
0,-1/ClientName

Here's what I've got so far:

SET UnixPath=%LocFolder:\=/%
SET UnixPath=/cygdrive/%UnixPath::=%
SET UnixPath=%UnixPath~:0,-1%/%ClientName%
ECHO %UnixPath%

Thanks.

sirbounty

Try this to see where's it's failing...

SET UnixPath=%LocFolder:\=/%
SET UnixPath=/cygdrive/%UnixPath::=%
echo [%UnixPath%]
SET UnixPath=%UnixPath~:0,-1%/%ClientName%
ECHO [%UnixPath%]

VortexAdmin

ASKER

Returned:

[/cygdrive/D/Backups ]
[0,-1ClientName]

Notice that ClientName is the name of the variable, but its actually populated.

ClientName=TestClient

sirbounty

I don't see where the space is introduced...try without reusing the same variable...

SET UnixPath=%LocFolder:\=/%
SET NewUnixPath=/cygdrive/%UnixPath::=%
echo [%NewUnixPath%]
SET FinalUnixPath=%UnixPath~:0,-1%/%ClientName%
ECHO [%FinalUnixPath%]

VortexAdmin

ASKER

OK, I did this:

Set LocFolder=D:\MyFolder
Set ClientName=MyClient

SET UnixPath=%LocFolder:\=/%
SET NewUnixPath=/cygdrive/%UnixPath::=%
echo [%NewUnixPath%]
SET FinalUnixPath=%UnixPath~:0,-1%/%ClientName%
ECHO [%FinalUnixPath%]

And ended up with this:
[/cygdrive/D/MyFolder]
[0,-1ClientName]

I set the LocFolder and ClientName variables immediately before running the rest of it and it got rid of the space. Before I was pulling them along with 5 others from an outside text file using a command like this:
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('find "ClientName=" ^< settings.ini') do set %%a

I checked through all my for /f lines and sure enough at the end of the 3rd one (%%c) was a space. No other character, nothing I could see, just a physical space in the text line where it couldn't be seen.

Thanks for all your help and sticking with me on it!!! I've got it from here.