Microsoft KB Archive/68268

= Simulating Wildcards =

Article ID: 68268

Article Last Modified on 5/12/2003

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft MS-DOS 3.1
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 3.2 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 3.21 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 3.3 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 3.3a
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 4.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 4.01 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 5.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 5.0a
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 6.0 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 6.2 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 6.21 Standard Edition
 * Microsoft MS-DOS 6.22 Standard Edition

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This article was previously published under Q68268



SUMMARY
You can simulate wildcards with the FOR command for those commands in MS-DOS that do not allow wildcards. The structure of the command is as follows for %p in (set) do (command) %p where %p is a variable used by the FOR command, (set) is a set of filenames that command will be applied to, and command is the command to be carried out. For example: for %p in (*.txt) do type %p

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for %p in (*.txt) do find &quot;CONFIG&quot; %p



MORE INFORMATION
You may want to create a batch file for this command because it will be much shorter. However, unlike the command-line version of the FOR command, the batch-file version uses two percent signs (%). The following are two batch-file examples: for %%p in (%1) do type %%p

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for %%p in (%1) do find &quot;%2&quot; %%p Using the second batch-file example, the following command typed at the MS-DOS prompt finds every file ending with the .TXT extension that has the string &quot;CONFIG&quot; in it. The quotation marks (&quot;%2&quot;) are specific to the FIND command and not necessarily part of the FOR command syntax. If the second example is in a batch file called FF.BAT, to invoking the batch-file command, type: ff *.txt CONFIG&quot;

Additional query words: 6.22 3.x 4.00 4.01 5.00 5.00a 6.00 6.20 wild card

Keywords: KB68268

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