Batch script does not echo contents of a variable and pause not working

Question

I am working on a script which iterates over every file in a specific folder and reads some information from, and numbers each.

So I am running over the files with a for-loop and that is working correctly. Now I added a variable i which should increment on each iteration of the loop.

I used set /ai=0 and inside the for-loop set /a i+=1 and this Set command does print the number to console. My problem now is that the set command prints the number, but when I echo the number with echo %i% it will always print 0 and not the increasing value. I also tried echo !i! but that does not work at all. It just prints !i! in the console.

I also added a pause command to the end of the script, but that gets ignored entirely.

This is my batch script:

@echo off
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion

set /a i=0

for /r %%n in (Links\*.lnk) do (

    set /a i+=1
    echo.
    echo [Button!i!Back]
    get.bat "%%n"

)

pause

This is an example of the output:

45
[Button!i!Back]
#@#HudIcons\VLC media player.ico
D:\Programme\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe

I also just realized, that for the first time the loop runs, the !i! does work correctly and prints the number, but not afterwards.

I know that I should probably not be calling the other batch file like this, but that is temporary.

Any ideas why this is behaving so weird?

Answer 1

Perhaps it would be easier for you without the Set /A incrementing method, and therefore no need for delayed expansion. The alternative methodology could involve using findstr.exe to provide the counting:

@Echo Off
SetLocal EnableExtensions DisableDelayedExpansion
For /F "Tokens=1,* Delims=:" %%G In ('Dir /B /S /A:-D "Links\*.lnk" ^
 2^> NUL ^| %SystemRoot%\System32\findstr.exe /EILN ".lnk"') Do (Echo=
    Echo [Button%%GBack]
    Call "get.bat" "%%H")
Pause

Answer 2

You use percentages symbol to call a variable %Variable% and to echo it echo %variable% to set one set variable=value Hope this helps you.