Nested for loop recursing directories
GlennG
I am writing a batch (win7) to recurse folders in my music collection to
manipulate particular files.
I have a folder structure:
D:\Music\Genre\Artist\Album\title.mp3
Starting in music folder, I have three nested for loops, code below.
The problems are:
a, non alphanumeric characters stuff up the change directory
b, it moves up the directory tree after the first genre
Any help would be appreciated. I have always wanted to learn the batch
language.
Cheers
Glenn
@echo off
cls
set thisdir=%cd%
:: parse genres folder
for /f "delims=" %%A in ('dir /b /ad') do (
cd "%%~nA"
echo Genre: %%A
:: parse artists
for /f "delims=" %%B in ('dir /b /ad') do (
cd "%%~nB"
echo Artist: %%B
:: parse albums
for /f "delims=" %%C in ('dir /b /ad') do (
cd "%%~nC"
echo Album: %%C
cd ..
)
cd ..
)
cd ..
)
cd /d "%thisdir%"
foxidrive
> I am writing a batch (win7) to recurse folders in my music collection to
> manipulate particular files.
>
> I have a folder structure:
>
> D:\Music\Genre\Artist\Album\title.mp3
>
Can you explain what you need to do?
Your approach might be the right one, or it might not depending on the task.
Mic
GlennG
What I want to do is move the folder.jpg from the last album up to the
artist folder so that it shows up in my media center. There is possibly
a better way of doing this, but I've wanted to learn how to use
iteration in batch files for ages. I have approx 4000 albums.
foxidrive
I need some clarification...
The task is to move folder.jpg from each album folder into the artist
folder?
Will folder.jpg be a unique name?
EG if artist1 has album1 album2 album3 will each album have a folder.jpg ?
--
Regards,
Mic
mazellan
Yes, the file is folder.jpg, and each album will have its own
folder.jpg. I was just going to copy them from oldest to latest album,
overwriting the copied file in the artist folder, so I will end up
with the latest album's artwork. My album folders all start with the
year, ie. 1889 Mozart's Greatest Hits
The idea is the iteration takes me to each album in turn where I do
someting like:
copy /y folder.jpg ..
foxidrive
> On Sep 16, 4:22 pm, foxidrive<foxidr...@gotcha.woohoo.invalid> wrote:
>> On 16/09/2010 16:02, GlennG wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> foxidrive wrote:
>>>> On 16/09/2010 15:20, GlennG wrote:
>>
>>>>> I am writing a batch (win7) to recurse folders in my music collection to
>>>>> manipulate particular files.
>>
>>>>> I have a folder structure:
>>
>>>>> D:\Music\Genre\Artist\Album\title.mp3
>>
>>>> Can you explain what you need to do?
>>
>>>> Your approach might be the right one, or it might not depending on the
>>>> task.
>>
>>>> Mic
>>
>>> What I want to do is move the folder.jpg from the last album up to the
>>> artist folder so that it shows up in my media center. There is possibly
>>> a better way of doing this, but I've wanted to learn how to use
>>> iteration in batch files for ages. I have approx 4000 albums.
>>
>> I need some clarification...
>>
>> The task is to move folder.jpg from each album folder into the artist
>> folder?
>> Will folder.jpg be a unique name?
>>
>> EG if artist1 has album1 album2 album3 will each album have a folder.jpg ?
>>
>
> folder.jpg. I was just going to copy them from oldest to latest album,
> overwriting the copied file in the artist folder, so I will end up
> with the latest album's artwork. My album folders all start with the
> year, ie. 1889 Mozart's Greatest Hits
> The idea is the iteration takes me to each album in turn where I do
> someting like:
> copy /y folder.jpg ..
In that scenario then this should work.
@echo off
for /f "delims=" %%a in ('dir folder.jpg /b /s') do (
pushd "%%~dpa"
copy /y folder.jpg ..
popd
)
--
Regards,
Mic
mazellan
Thanks Mic that works great.
billious
"GlennG" <mazel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OOhko.55934$u16....@newsfe17.iad...
Fundamental syntax error.
"::" is a broken label used for convenience as a comment.
You can't use labels WITHIN a FOR loop.
Change the comments within the loop to REM and you'll see a difference.....
jeb
> Fundamental syntax error.
>
> "::" is a broken label used for convenience as a comment.
>
> You can't use labels WITHIN a FOR loop.
>
> Change the comments within the loop to REM and you'll see a difference.....
Ok, "::" is a label without a name, so you can not call it, but you
can use it as comment.
You can use labels WITHIN a for loop or generally in paranthesis
blocks, but it is not allowed to place it at the end.
It is also possible to call/jump to this labels, it's a bad idea (a
goto stops the loop), but it works.
billious
"jeb" <xi...@gmx.de> wrote in message
news:bc60bf58-40a4-48fc...@a11g2000vbn.googlegroups.com...
You appear to be correct. I've had trouble with the "::" comments in a loop
before and cured them with a change to REM - hadn't done an in-depth
investigation...
Frank P. Westlake
> I've had trouble with the "::" comments in a loop before and cured
Me also; I think MS must have fixed this with a service pack. Because of
the original state it is still better to avoid '::' within parentheses.
Frank
I'm_HERE
-----------------------
REM %~
echo test1
=============
REM %^
echo test2
============
REM. >FILE
echo test3
bug with ::
---------------
(
echo test1
::commentaire
::commentaire
echo test2
)
==============
for %%a in (test 3) do (
echo %%a
:: test3
)
foxidrive
> bug with REM:
> -----------------------
This is an issue with %~ being incompatible with the %~0 syntax.
> REM %~
> echo test1
>
> =============
This one uses the ^ as the end of line continuation character so it is
effectively just a rem'ed line.
> REM %^
> echo test2
>
> ============
This has always been an issue with REM when including < > | etc.
That's why :: was superior.
> REM.>FILE
> echo test3
>
> bug with ::
> ---------------
This is interesting. Remove one of the lines and it works normally.
> (
> echo test1
> ::commentaire
> ::commentaire
> echo test2
> )
>
Here is the behaviour of a label inside a loop. If you use :test3 it
will do the same thing.
> ==============
>
> for %%a in (test 3) do (
> echo %%a
> :: test3
> )
Thanks for your post. It exercised my grey matter. :)
--
Regards,
Mic
I'm_HERE
see this
for %%i in (test 3) do (
echo %%i
:: comment
)
and
for %%i in (test 3) do (
:: comment
echo %%i
)
foxidrive
> Thanks for your post foxidrive
>
> see this
>
> for %%i in (test 3) do (
> echo %%i
> :: comment
> )
>
> and
I see. The placement of the :: affects the result.
> for %%i in (test 3) do (
> :: comment
> echo %%i
>
> )
>
--
Regards,
Mic
jeb
This is an issue with %~ being incompatible with the %~0 syntax.
> REM %~
> echo test1
Yes the %~ is generally not allowed, but why the REM or :: are not
able to remark it and avoid the error.
It is an issue that the percent phase is before the "REM" is detected.
The interpreter phases are explained also in
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/alt.msdos.batch.nt/msg/057272ca12daa629
But now I get confused
(
:: comment
echo work
)
(
:: comment
echo This one fails
)
(
:: comment ^
FehlerError echo You see this, but why?
)
jeb
foxidrive
> foxidrive wrote:
>
> This is an issue with %~ being incompatible with the %~0 syntax.
>
>> > REM %~
>> > echo test1
> Yes the %~ is generally not allowed, but why the REM or :: are not
> able to remark it and avoid the error.
A REMark line is parsed by cmd and command.com and which is why
redirection characters are also verboten.
--
Regards,
Mic
jeb
> A REMark line is parsed by cmd and command.com and which is why
> redirection characters are also verboten.
Not at all.
rem. > File
creates a file
but
rem > File
remarks the complete line
rem & echo This does not work
rem\ echo nix & echo But this one
It's because the REM is detected in the second phase of the
interpreter, but only if it is typed the correct way.
If it is detected it disables the rest of the line (not correct for
carets at all but that's not the subject).
If the token does not match in phase 2, the rest of the line is
interpreted regulary with ^&|<>.
But later the rem is detected, and remark in this example the "echo
nix"
jeb
Timo Salmi
> On 18/09/2010 23:11, I'm_HERE wrote:
>> bug with REM:
>> REM %~
>> echo test1
There is some incomplete information and links to earlier discussions in
48} Why do some comment lines cause errors? What can I do about it?
http://www.netikka.net/tsneti/info/tscmd048.htm
All the best, Timo
--
Prof. Timo Salmi mailto:t...@uwasa.fi ftp & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/
Hpage: http://www.uwasa.fi/laskentatoimi/english/personnel/salmitimo/
Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Vaasa, Finland
Useful CMD script tricks http://www.netikka.net/tsneti/info/tscmd.php
foxidrive
> foxidrive wrote:
>> A REMark line is parsed by cmd and command.com and which is why
>> redirection characters are also verboten.
>
> Not at all.
>
> rem.> File
> creates a file
>
> but
>
> rem > File
> remarks the complete line
Not so in MSDOS V6.22
It's changed since msdos but it's still a fact that REM cannot be used
as robustly as :: with the character set.
--
Regards,
Mic
Timo Salmi
>> foxidrive wrote:
>>> A REMark line is parsed by cmd and command.com and which is why
>>> redirection characters are also verboten.
Except for the special sake of the group's interest, the main advice is
to avoid remarks within constructs. That anso explains the
(
)
parsing phenomenon. It probably boils down to why so many
if (
)
and
for (
)
constructs elicit confusion and questions from the users.
One can't quite second-guess the interpreter. :-)
All the best, Timo
--
Prof. Timo Salmi mailto:t...@uwasa.fi ftp & http://garbo.uwasa.fi/
Hpage: http://www.uwasa.fi/laskentatoimi/english/personnel/salmitimo/
Department of Accounting and Finance, University of Vaasa, Finland
Useful script files and tricks ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/link/tscmd.zip
jeb
> parsing phenomenon. It probably boils down to why so many
> if (
> )
> and
> for (
> )
> constructs elicit confusion and questions from the users.
>
> One can't quite second-guess the interpreter. :-)
>
> All the best, Timo
I suppose my explanation of the batchline parser (without paranthesis)
is nearly complete.
My aim is to be able to understand the complete interpreter, not only
to say don't use this, sometimes it does not work.
jeb
billious
A fine ambition indeed.
Problem is that different versions have different rules - in fact Frank's
comment seems to indicate that we have different behaviour within well- who
knows? It might be one OS version and different service packs, or it might
be an incremental fix silently distributed as part of the constant stream of
fixes. There's no information apparently easily available about what
particular KBxxxx fixed what particular problem.
Or attempted to fix, as seems more like the case.
I believe that the best we can do is to indeed say to avoid particular
constructs because they're unreliable and weather the pleadings of those
well-intentioned programmers whose systems don't exhibit the error.
Frank P. Westlake
news:f2368619-9650-4c50...@l17g2000vbf.googlegroups.com...
> But now I get confused
Method 1:
> (
> :: comment
> echo work
> )
Method 2:
> (
> :: comment
>
> echo This one fails
> )
Method 3:
> (
> :: comment ^
>
> FehlerError echo You see this, but why?
> )
Methods 1 and 3 above are the same. The result of the escape character
(^) in method 3 makes it:
(
:: comment
FehlerError echo You see this, but why?
)
But any confusion is justified in this case and I think required in all
cases to be able to write CMD script.
Frank
jeb
Method3 is not only different by the "^" caret, also the empty line is
important.
But my confusion is nearly gone, as you can see here.
@echo off
set :=^%=~0%
%=~dp0%
echo=%=~%
<:echo call :%%%% <nul ^
set five=three,one & ^
echo two
(
echo three
%:~% ^
echO five
:label
:%:~t0^
:label^
:\..\%~nx0 & echo one & Echo hhh
:ds^
:label%:%four & rem ^
echo=%4
:xy
:\..\%~nx0 & call :~%%%%
)
I suppose, the code need not to be explained, it is obvious :-)
jeb
foxidrive
> But my confusion is nearly gone, as you can see here.
>
> @echo off
> set :=^%=~0%
> %=~dp0%
> echo=%=~%
> <:echo call :%%%%<nul ^
> echo two
> (
> echo three
> %:~% ^
> echO five
> :label
> :%:~t0^
> :label^
> :\..\%~nx0& echo one& Echo hhh
> :ds^
> echo=%4
> :xy
> :\..\%~nx0& call :~%%%%
> )
>
> I suppose, the code need not to be explained, it is obvious :-)
>
> jeb
I await the comments. :)
--
Regards,
Mic
Frank P. Westlake
news:80106717-ee56-4b00...@h13g2000yqa.googlegroups.com...
> Frank P. Westlake wrote:
>> Method 3:
>>
>> > (
>> > :: comment ^
>> >
>> > FehlerError echo You see this, but why?
>> > )
> Method3 is not only different by the "^" caret, also the empty line is
> important.
It is important when within parentheses? Normally it is not but I don't
recall testing it within parentheses. Without the parentheses the escape
character escapes either the <CR> or the <LF> -- I think I recall that
it is <CR> -- so the line
"LINE 1<CR><LF>LINE 2" becomes
"LINE 1<LF>LINE 2", or perhaps
"LINE 1<CR>LINE 2".
So my statement that 1 and 3 are identical is not true. The appearance
might be the same but the strings may be different.
> But my confusion is nearly gone, as you can see here.
<Script removed>
> I suppose, the code need not to be explained, it is obvious :-)
From just looking at the script I can follow the first half but I have
not seen before what you are doing with labels so I cannot follow the
rest. Unfortunately I won't have the time necessary to examine it so I
hope you will provide a description of the general behavior of the
labels as you are using them.
And thanks for joining us Jeb.
Frank
jeb
Frank P. Westlake schrieb:
Ok. I try to explain it a bit.
The code
set :=^%=~0%
%=~dp0%
echo=%=~%
is only for obfuscation, as the variable %=~0% and %=~dp0% can't
exists and so it will be replaced with nothing.
So you get
set :^
echo=
The blank line is important, because the caret ^ will produce in the
variable ":" a "<Linefeed>echo=".
The next block is only one command line (and also a legal label!)
<:echo call :%%%% <nul ^
set five=three,one & ^
echo two
As command line, it is the same as call :%%%% set five=three,one
<:echo <nul & echo two
The <:echo redirection will be removed, because only the last
redirection for a given stream number will be active, all other are
removed without recognizing the syntax.
As a call statement cause to parse the line two times, the search will
be for the label ":%"
The label is in this example ":%:~t0^ " because the label searcher
does not expand anything, and the name of a label stops at a :<space>
or +, the caret at this line is unimportant, because a call will
always start the code at the next line after the label.
The next line is a label with a caret at the end so the the parser
interpetes (and ignores) it as
:label^
:\..\%~nx0 & echo one & Echo hhh
--->
":label :\..\%~nx0 & echo one & Echo hhh"
Then comes also a label with a caret so you get for the lines (and
expanding the %:% var)
:ds^
:label%:%four & rem ^
echo=%4
":ds:label<LineFeed>echo= four & rem ^"
So why it stops at the end of line 2 with "rem ^" ?
Because there is a linefeed in the line, outside of blocks the parser
stops parsing at linefeeds.
"echo=%4"
And it will print %4="one" (call :%%%% set five=three,one ) %1=set
%2=five %3=three %4=one
The next two lines are normal labels and they will be ignored, and it
runs to the end, returning to the "caller"
:xy
:\..\%~nx0 & call :~%%%%
The caller was the line "call :%%%% set five=three,one <:echo <nul &
echo two "
So the "two" is printed (by the ampersand)
Now the block is completly scanned and cached, as
(
echo three
echo=four & remecho=
& call :~%%
)
But why?
(
Ok --- echo three
Label with caret --- %:~% ^
Caret from the last line --- echO five
A normal label --- :label
Label with caret --- :%:~t0^
Caret from the last line --- :label^
Caret from the last line --- :\..\%~nx0 & echo one & Echo hhh
Secondary label with caret ---:ds^
Caret from the last line, BUT Linefeed --- :label%:%four & rem ^
*** Expands to two lines --- :label
*** the rem with caret consumes the next line --- echo=four & remecho=
%4
A normal label --- :xy
Secondary label!!! --- :\..\%~nx0 & call :~%%%%
*** Secondary label expands to --- & call :~%
)
Ok, two significant new items are here.
1. A linefeed in a paranthesis block does not stop the parsing, it
splits the line into two lines
2. Each label has a requires secondary line, the secondary line can be
a normal command or also a label,
but the first part of a label have to be a legal commdand. And an
ampersand works in a the secondary label line!
That's the cause why it seems, that a label is not allowed at the at
of a block.
(
echo hello
:this Fails
)
But only the secondary line is the problem, in this case the ")"
(
echo hello
:first label
:secondary label
)
jeb
Frank P. Westlake
news:618cde8b-a489-4645...@i5g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
> Ok. I try to explain it a bit.
Thank you very much for your effort in that explanation; and in
English -- isn't German your native language? I will have to save it and
study it when I have electricity on a daily basis -- perhaps late next
month. Right now I only have two days each week on the laptop and the
rest of the time I use a handheld (Archos 5).
Frank
jeb
And yes, german is my native language.
I try this, because my main interesst in batch is to understand all
the possiblities, tricks and failures.
To write programs, batch isn't my first choice.
jeb
Frank P. Westlake
news:41578ea9-f9fd-4d6a...@n3g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
> Ok, I understand, my english is really bad :-(
> And yes, german is my native language.
I wasn't complaining about your English -- I was praising it. Here is my
German:
That was it; if you read too fast you might have missed it.
Frank