Setting and testing a variable in windows batch file

Question

Creating a batch utility script on Windows 7 to invoke an executable. It essentially works, EXCEPT that my second IF statement. Tried a number of different things.

My intent is to invoke 'DoSomething' for each command line argument. That part works! The second IF statement prints a help message only if there no parameters given on the command line. Well, that's the intent. That's not what it's doing.

@ECHO OFF

:Start
SET a_file_was_processed="false"
IF "%1" NEQ "" (
  SET a_file_was_processed="true"
  ECHO Extracting table %1 from database.
  DoSomething word%1 > output_%1.txt
  ECHO Finished extract table to file output_%1.txt
SHIFT
GOTO Start
)

if a_file_was_processed NEQ "true" (
  ECHO Invoke this script as: Extract_From_sdf  table_name1   table_name2
)

Ideas?

Steve · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-03 20:27:49Z

1

Tried with these changes and seems to work as expected

@ECHO OFF

SET a_file_was_processed="false"
:Start
IF "%1" NEQ "" (
  SET a_file_was_processed="true"
  ECHO Extracting table %1 from database.
  rem --- DoSomething word%1 > output_%1.txt
  ECHO Finished extract table to file output_%1.txt
SHIFT
GOTO Start
)

if %a_file_was_processed% NEQ "true" (
  ECHO Invoke this script as: Extract_From_sdf  table_name1   table_name2
)

The first obvious error is the label :Start before the setting to false. Then to refer to the value of a variable you need to enclose the variable in %

answered Oct 3, 2012 at 20:27

Steve

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