Comments on: Good old DOS

By: Shikha (Handy Excel Tips)

Shikha (Handy Excel Tips) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:18:00 +0000

I am using a similar command to generate a list of all files placed in a folder, check it out here:

http://www.handyexceltips.com/2008/03/05/generating-list-of-the-contents-of-any-folder/

Regards

By: fzz

fzz — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 02:48:00 +0000

Marcus, this isn’t the best forum for help with batch files. Better to use the alt.msdos.batch.nt or microsoft.public.win2000.cmdprompt.admin newsgroups.

That said, if you want to skip a given number of lines in each file but the first, you could try the following batch file.

@setlocal enableextensions
@echo off
if “%~1? == “” if “%~2? == “” (
echo usage: “%~0? filemask targetfile [skiplines]
goto :EOF
)
set tf=”%~2?
if exist %tf% del %tf%
if not “%~3? == “” set skip=+%~3
for %%f in (“%~1?) do call ROC “%%f”
goto :EOF
ROC
more %skipswitch% “%~1? >> %tf%
set skipswitch=%skip%

By: Marcus Christian

Marcus Christian — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:01:00 +0000

I have several .csv files in one folder. I have used the copy c:walley*.csv fred.csv. I need all of the merged csv files in one csv with a new name. This works fine, but the first row of each csv file are the same. I quess what I am asking is there a way to copy ranges.

By: fzz

fzz — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:36:00 +0000

Learning by doing is best. Nothing beats participating in the alt.msdos.batch.nt newsgroup.

By: gruff999

gruff999 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:01:00 +0000

I'm a big fan of CMD.EXE under Windows XP (NT version was pretty good too). You can do some powerful stuff (and quickly) once you get round some counter-intuitive syntax issues.

As an application support monkey on a domain with 3,500+ XP clients I'm happy to take advantage of anything I can to make life easier.

For those who want to get into CMD scripts, I recommend Tim Hill's excellent "Windows NT Shell Scripting". Doesn't cover XP and above but the first couple of chapters are invaluable.

I haven't found a better definitive introduction online.

If I ever get my own website running I'll be posting my favourite CMD script tips.

By: fzz

fzz — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:49:00 +0000

steven: not using copy. The copy command reproduces each file EXACTLY, so if any are missing newlines at the end, those lines will be missing newlines in the combined file, so the first line of the next file will continue on that line in the combined file.

You'd need to use a for loop calling more.

(for %f in (*.csv) do @more %f) > all.txt

Or you could fix your CSV files.

for %f in (*.csv) do echo/>> %f

By: steven

steven — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 22:24:00 +0000

i tried the

copy *.csv all.txt

and it is wrapping the end of each file with the new csv file (or 2nd file rather).

is there a way to have it put in a "hard return" at the end of each file so it keeps each record on one line rather than wrapping?

thanks!

By: Rembo

Rembo — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 11:53:00 +0000

There's also PCDOS, DRDOS etc. If it's just a commander you want, you might want to take a look at 4DOS (now free but unsupported). I've been using that from the beginning to create 'magical' batchfiles, with colored inputboxes etc. They were using pushd and popd before MS even heard about it. Great commander that I still use every now and then, even under Windows XP.

http://www.jpsoft.com/download.html

Rembo

By: jim in austin

jim in austin — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:29:00 +0000

Oh, and if you are REALLY feeling nostalgic about DOS, there's always:

http://www.freedos.org/

By: jim in austin

jim in austin — Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:16:00 +0000

Well, technically, if you are using cmd.exe it isn't DOS. It's the NT command line console that can be used as a less than perfectly compatible DOS emulation. The difference is only significant if you are tasked with getting old DOS programs to run under NT.

In any case, I work with a *LOT* of CSV files coming from POS systems. I build flat file databases in excel with them which I then review for coding errors before copying them into Solomon. From time to time I have a use for command line tools as well. I use a variety of the gnuwin32 ports such as awk, sed and grep. The complete collection is available at:

http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/

An interesting graphical tool for working with CSV files is the CSVed. It and some other unique and useful text tools are available for free from:

http://home.hccnet.nl/s.j.francke/t2t/text2table.htm