Expanding and looping over paths

[blacl]

Hi.  I'd like to make a batch file that loops over a semicolon separated path variable and displays each directory on a different line.  I am having 2 problems trying to do this:

1. I am passing in the name of the path variable to loop over ("path", "classpath", etc).  How can I expand that path in a variable.  For example, in my batch file, %1 = "path".  How can I assign the contents of %path% to a variable.  I don't want to test if "%1" = "path" as I want this to be flexible enough to handle any path variable (I have a lot of them).

2. How can I loop over a semicolon separated string and display each path on a separate line.  I've been playing with "for /f" quite a bit, but haven't figured out how to manipulate the tokens and delimiters keywords.

Thanks!

[erobby]

You mean something like this?

for /f "delims=;" %%a in ('echo %path%') do echo %%a >> pathlist.txt

[blacl]

Sort of.  When I substituted this into my macro, I got a file where all the paths were on a single line and separated by a space:

c:\dir1 c:\dir2 c:\dir3...

What I want is a listing on my console where each path is on a separate line:
c:\dir1
c:\dir2
...

Also, if %1=PATH, what would the echo look like?  How would I get the contents of the path variable.  For example:

displaypath path
c:\dir1
c:\dir2
...

This would set %1="path" in "displaypath".  How do I get to the contents of path?
Thanks!

[Dias de verano]

Your problem is that the /F switch tells FOR to treat whatever is in the parentheses as a sequence of lines, and the PATH environment variable string is just one line. What you can do is replace every semicolon with the sequence quote-space-quote so that FOR can chop up the line. Then you can use the ~ variable modifier to dequote the substring. Or not as the case may be.

This code parses a semicolon delimited string into separate lines. The IF test is to filter out the results of multiple or trailing semicolons. For want of any better idea, I called it semi-parse.bat.  The parameter passed is quoted to avoid problems with spaces.

Code: [Select]

@echo off
set string=%~1
for %%A in ("%string:;=" "%") do (
if not "%%~A"=="" echo.%%~A
)

Code: [Select]

C:\>semi-parse.bat "apples;pears;oranges"
apples
pears
oranges

C:\>set teststring=shoes;gloves;hat and coat

C:\>semi-parse.bat "%teststring%"
shoes
gloves
hat and coat

C:\>set teststring=mother;;father;sister;brother;

C:\>semi-parse.bat "%teststring%"
mother
father
sister
brother

C:\>semi-parse.bat "%path%"
C:\WINDOWS\system32
C:\WINDOWS
C:\WINDOWS\System32\Wbem

C:\>

[blacl]

Thank you both.  This is very helpful!  It basically solves my problem and with a little tuning will be exactly what I wanted.