CODEWITHSUNDEEP
arraysbatch-filecmd
Asier Pomposo
Asier Pomposo

Reputation: 619

pass an array or list to .bat file to concatenate

I am trying to pass an array to a conca.bat file so I can concatenate all the strings that list or array has. I have been able to concatenate, buty just if I put the Array by hand, but I am not able to do it when I pass ii from command line...

It works:

FOR %%i IN (12346,49874,48954) DO call :concat %%i
set var=%var%%1;

Doesn´t work

FOR %%i IN %1 DO call :concat %%i
set var=%var%%1;

What is the structure I must follow from the command prompt?

conca.bat "12346,49874"

or 

conca.bat {12346,49874}

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1909

Answers (1)

MichaelS
MichaelS

Reputation: 6032

There are no real lists or arrays in CMD. However, if I've understood your question correctly, you are trying to do something like this:

concat.bat 123 456 789

and want the output to be 123456789. If this is the case, SHIFT is the magic command you are looking for. This should do it:

@ECHO OFF
SET concatString=
:LOOP
IF [%1]==[] GOTO ENDLOOP
SET concatString=%concatString%%1
SHIFT
GOTO LOOP
:ENDLOOP
ECHO %concatString%
PAUSE

When you pass parameters to a bat file via command line, they are accessible via %1, %2, %3 and so in. This means for concat.bat a b c that %1 is a, %2 is b and %3 is c. The only problem is that we might not know how many parameters there will be and you want your script to work with only one parameter as well as with 100 of them. At this point SHIFT is saving the day.

SHIFT does one simple thing. It moves the index of the parameters to the right, so the "old" %1 disappears, %2 becomes %1, %3 becomes %2 and so on. We just keep on looping until the last passed parameter becomes %1. After another shift there is no value left which can be assigned to %1 so [%1]==[] becomes true and we jump out of the loop.

Upvotes: 1

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