Command Line: removing text from echo data in a Batch File

Question

In a batch file, I am trying to figure out how to remove characters at front/back of an command echo'd data. Not specifically with a directory, but for sake of example. Is there a way to strip characters at front or back of data as it is written to a file?

EXAMPLE: dir /b *.txt >dir.txt

This result would save the filenames of a directory: filename.txt thisistest.txt hardquestion.txt

but I would like to strip out last 4 characters of the filenames so it would echo to dir.txt only the filename: filename thisistest hardquestion

Answer 1

>dir.txt (for %%a in (*.txt) do echo %%~na)

for command will iterate over the indicated set of files and for each one, a reference to the file is stored in the replaceable parameter ( %%a in this case) and the code after the do clause executed.

In this case, the code executed for each of the files is echo %%~na , echo the name of the file referenced by %%a

All the for command output is redirected to the final file.