Check every string in textfile for substring

Question

I've searched a long time and didn't find something useful for my problem. It may sound simple, I would be very happy if somebody could help me:

I want to write a batch script, which proves every string in a textfile whether it contains a specific substring. If this is the case, the whole string, which contains this substring, should be printed out. The strings, I'm looking for, are surrounded by double quotes.

My code just works for all lines of my textfile, but I need it for all strings.

Thx in advance!

@echo off
setlocal enableextensions enabledelayedexpansion
    for /f "delims=" %%A in ('findstr "somesubstring" "textfile.txt"') do (
        echo %%A 
    )

NirMH : thx, this looks useful, but i need to generate such a list of strings automatically by batch scripts. — bianconero
– bianconero, Commented Jun 2, 2014 at 12:19
Please indicate what you understand by "string". Are "strings" enclosed in double quotes in the line? What about the characters that are outside the "strings"? Post an example of the file and the desired result. Edit your question please, do NOT post additional information here as a comment. — Aacini
– Aacini, Commented Jun 2, 2014 at 14:49

Aacini · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-03 14:29:23Z

2

Perhaps is this what you want?

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

set "substring=somesubstring"
for /f "delims=" %%A in ('findstr "%substring%" "textfile.txt"') do (
   for %%B in (%%A) do (
      set "string=%%~B"
      if "!string:%substring%=!" neq "!string!" echo %%B
   )
)

This Bath file may fail if the characters outside the "strings" (not enclosed in quotes) are special Batch characters.

edited Jun 3, 2014 at 14:29

answered Jun 2, 2014 at 14:58

Aacini

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2 Comments

bianconero Over a year ago

tried your code, but it doen't provide me just the string, I want- I still get the whole line. But I think I've to handle that in another way- but thx for your answer!

dbenham Over a year ago

@bianconero - There is a simple bug - it should read echo %%B at the end, and then you should get your result.

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 10:32:25Z

1

I would first use a tool to isolate each string on a single line. Then you can use FINDSTR to return only quoted lines that contain the substring

The trickiest part is isolating the quoted strings. My REPL.BAT regex search and replace utility is a good option. It is a hybrid JScript/batch script that will run natively on any modern Windows machine from XP onward.

type "textfile.txt" | repl (\q.*?\q) \r\n$1\r\n x | findstr /x ^"\".*substring.*\"^"

If you want to see your strings without enclosing quotes, then:

for /f delims^=^ eol^= %%A in (
  'type "textfile.txt" ^| repl (\q.*?\q) \r\n$1\r\n x ^| findstr /x ^"\".*substring.*\"^"'
) do echo %%~A

edited May 23, 2017 at 10:32

CommunityBot

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answered Jun 2, 2014 at 15:31

dbenham

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