Hi Jim,

thanks for the hints. My response is quite likely much too late, but I wasn't around for a while.

I have tried the environment variable %CD% that you mentioned in a batch file like this:


The output this batch file creates when called from within the directory where it is stored is as expected:


and the output when called from from the root directory is this:


I noticed that the variable is inconsistent in adding a trailing backslash as the the ending character.

---

CopyMyFiles.cmd is stored in C:\Scripts
At the command prompt, you change directories to F:\Data
From there you type in the command
       C:\Scripts\CopyMyFiles.cmd
The %CD% variable will contain the value F:\Data.

I agree with everything you say, but would you not get the same behaviour when omitting the %CD%\ from your suggested CopyMyFiles.cmd?

copy data.exe c:\windows\system32\data
copy pic.jpg C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop

I might have misunderstood the original question, but it seems to me that the question was to find a way to refer to the directory where the batch file is located (USB device?), rather than storing the batch on the hard drive.


Friendly

Wolf

Only today I noticed that there is another question unanswered:

and the line: @echo off, that removes extra spaces right?

-reply#4

It toggles the "default batch echo" state OFF, which is otherwise ON. Now to understand what the default batch echo does, take the following code:


What happens here is this:
echo on     : this line will switch the echo state ON (unnecessary, it is ON anyway), and put out a message about the new state: ECHO is on
echo 1      : this will put out the string "1"
echo.        : this will put out a empty line
echo 2      : this will put out the string "2"
               : this will put out a prompt (C:\TestCopy\>) or similar
echo off    : this will switch the default batch echo off, and put out a message about the new state: ECHO is off
echo 3      : this will put out the string "3"
echo         : this will put out a message about the state of the default batch echo: ECHO is off
echo 4      : this will put out the string "4"

The output of that batch is very messy. Quite often I want to have empty lines in my code (for structuring) and I don't want to see the prompt echoed to the screen. That is why I have put "echo off" in the first line of the batch file in reply #3. If you remove the "@" sign from that batch you will still see the message "ECHO is off", because when the batch starts, the echo is on, and the first command will create some output. It switches the echo off for all the following lines, not for itself.

The "@" sign in front of any line switches the echo off for that particular line only. So in a batch with only one line you could write:


and get the same effect (avoid messy output).


Greetings
Wolf