Text file parsing in batch files

[watertraveller]

Hi. I'm new to batch files, and relatively new to the Windows command line in general.

I'm making a batch file for the Windows XP command line. I want to examine, for each line of a text file, what the first few characters are. I want to count up how many lines started with one set of characters, how many started with another, etc. And I want to output that count into a different text file.

I know how to read in the text and output it to a new file, but I don't know how to check just the first few characters. I also don't know how to store the count in a variable in the batch file. (Do batch files even have variables? They must, right?)

Thank you for your time; I appreciate it.

[Nepomuk]

Hi watertraveller! Welcome to bytes.com!

It's great to have you here!

When you post, please always keep to the Posting Guidelines and when you post code, please post it in [code] ... [/code] tags.

About your question: Yes, you can set variables in batch files. For example:

set countA=0
set /a countA+=1
echo There were %countA% a's in that text.

will return the current value of the variable countA (which is 1).

I'm not sure how to actually extract the first character from a line, but that should certainly help a bit.

Otherwise, I'll just wish you the best and hope you enjoy being part of bytes.com!

Greetings,
Nepomuk

PS.: I've started a thread in the Feedback Forum to find out, why that signature wont show up.

[jg007]

one command that might help you is ' FOR ' , just type ' for /? ' to see the syntax

I don't really know if you can do exactly what you want from a batch file / dos and I have not tried to do anything similar but I suspect that you might have to resort to using VBScript to achieve this.

also a little more complicated but you might want to look at Microsoft's Powershell as it is VERY powerful once you work out how to use it :)

[watertraveller]

Thanks, I'll take a look at vbscript and, if I have to, PowerShell.

[jg007]

post back if you have any problems and if I can find time I will see if I can work out some vbs code.