Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Sometimes people go to great lengths to get information which is available in a much simpler way. We saw it a few days ago when we found a 200+-line C# program that could be replaced with a 90-byte batch file. Here's another example of a rather roundabout way of capturing the current directory from a batch file.

The easy way is to use the %CD% pseudo-variable. It expands to the current working directory. 

set OLDDIR=%CD%
.. do stuff ..
chdir /d %OLDDIR% &rem restore current directory

(Of course, directory save/restore could more easily have been done with pushd/popd, but that's not the point here.)

The %CD% trick is handy even from the command line. For example, I often find myself in a directory where there's a file that I want to operate on but... oh, I need to chdir to some other directory in order to perform that operation. 

set _=%CD%\curfile.txt
cd ... some other directory ...
somecommand args %_% args

(I like to use %_% as my scratch environment variable.)

Type SET /? to see the other pseudo-variables provided by the command processor.

Published Friday, January 28, 2005 10:02 AM by oldnewthing
Filed under:

Comments

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 10:17 AM by sil
That is undeniably useful, but more often I find myself wanting to find the directory that a specific batch file is in from inside that batch file, which is a bit more awkward.

Half the time I end up doing something like this:

:: Change to the directory that this batch file is in
:: NB: it must be invoked with a full path!
for /f %%i in ("%0") do set curpath=%%~dpi
cd /d %curpath%

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 10:27 AM by Ryan
Why not use pushd/popd? No need to use an environment variable at all.

pushd ... some other directory ...
.. do stuff ..
popd &rem restore current directory

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 10:39 AM by Raymond Chen
Um, try reading past the third paragraph.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 10:40 AM by Ryan
Doh! Sorry.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 10:46 AM by waaaay back
I've written some stuff for myself that stores the current directory to a file on the current drive.
A program reads that file, and switches to that directory on the current drive. Very handy for

1. Crash recovery on pre-XP machines
2. Getting back to where I was on my Laptop.

Ryan

Raymond stated
"
(Of course, directory save/restore could more easily have been done with pushd/popd, but that's not the point here.)
"

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 11:12 AM by Centaur
The post under the second link is useful because it solves the general problem of capturing output from an external program. %CD% is an easier solution but only for a specific problem of getting the current directory.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 11:36 AM by ac
>>
More often I find myself wanting to find the directory that a specific batch file is in from inside that batch file, which is a bit more awkward.

:: Change to the directory that this batch file is in
:: NB: it must be invoked with a full path!
for /f %%i in ("%0") do set curpath=%%~dpi
cd /d %curpath%
<<

This is a bit simpler:

%0\
cd %0\..
cd /d %0\..

The first two lines are for 9x which doesn't support the /d flag, only the third line is required for NTx. This nifty solution was originally found at alt.msdos.batch.nt.

# Get Directory Path of an executing Batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 4:34 PM by Wes' Puzzling Blog

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 1:35 PM by CornedBee
The best way to do this stuff is, IMHO, to install Cygwin or similar and write Bash scripts.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 1:38 PM by ca
Works as well:
cd /d %~dp0

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 1:45 PM by Mike Dimmick
If you want to know where the batch file lives: %~dp0

%0 is the name of the batch file. ~dp gives you the drive and path of the specified argument.

I use this technique a lot for automating eMbedded Visual C++ builds. The command-line build environment is pretty tricky to use for Windows CE, so I just use evc /make. Well, actually I use a C# program I wrote which looks up in the registry where eVC is installed and runs evc.com from either eVC 3.0 or eVC 4.0 depending on the command line argument passed, or if no version is specified, on the first line of the workspace file.

For most of my projects I've now got down to the holy grail of single-command automated builds through a variety of batch files and simple utilities like that one. The 'buildme' batch file rebuilds all the components from source then builds a Windows CE installation CAB for potentially many platforms.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 1:48 PM by mathias
Regarding pushd/popd: is there a way to list the content if its stack? I always seem to forget what I've pushd'd and if popd will actually take me back where I want.

# I'm verbose enough already ...

Friday, January 28, 2005 5:39 PM by thekulp.com
<p>... I don't need a verbose language to program in!</p>
<p>For the longest time I thought that the equivalent of backticks in UNIX (substituting \`*cmd*\` with the output of *cmd*) was impossible in Windows. It probably is impossible pre-Win2k, but I ha

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 4:21 PM by BlackTigerX
you can also use SUBST...

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 4:42 PM by Andreas Häber
"Regarding pushd/popd: is there a way to list the content if its stack? I always seem to forget what I've pushd'd and if popd will actually take me back where I want. "

Don't know if you can get a list of the stack contents, but you can set the prompt to show you how deep the stack is by adding $+ to the prompt. See prompt /? for more info of course. But would be nice to output what the stack is too.. anybody who knows if that is possible?

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 5:37 PM by Greg
Didn't know that one (%CD%).

I use %TEMP% now and then too, if I want to try out a code snippet but don't need to keep the project. I'll save the project to %TEMP%.

I'm sure you all know this, but you can use . for
the current directory and .. for the parent of the current directory. Very handy.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Friday, January 28, 2005 6:38 PM by Mark Ingalls [exmsft]
"is there a way to list the content if its stack?"

On windows xp, issuing pushd with no args lists the contents of the stack:

C:\temp>pushd "\Documents and Settings"

C:\Documents and Settings>pushd
C:\temp

C:\Documents and Settings>pushd \tools

C:\tools>pushd
C:\Documents and Settings
C:\temp

on other versions of windows, YMMV.

# Useful for canonical paths, too

Friday, January 28, 2005 11:48 PM by Mr. Ed
You can use pushd + %CD% to get the canonical version of a path, too:

pushd %MYPATH%
set MYPATH=%CD%
popd

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Saturday, January 29, 2005 12:21 AM by Jeremy Morton [MSFT]
In a lot of my CMD scripts, I use the %RANDOM% pseudo-variable; it's great for creating temp files that you don't want to collide with other instances of your script. E.g. foo.cmd:

@if DEFINED _echo @( echo on ) else @( echo off )
:RandomFile
set __foo_ScratchFile=%TEMP%\foo.scratch.%RANDOM%.txt
if EXIST %__foo_ScratchFile% goto RandomFile

(
echo Scratch foo content!
echo Second line of content
echo.
echo Fourth line
) > %__foo_ScratchFile%

if EXIST %__foo_ScratchFile% del /f/q %__foo_ScratchFile% > nul 2>&1


There's a fair amount of fun CMD script fun in there... :)

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Saturday, January 29, 2005 12:39 AM by Jeremy Morton [MSFT]
A commenter on the link that Raymond pointed to up top says:

-----
If you've got Cygwin installed, you can use its 'date' command to get hold of a suitable suffix for logfiles, e.g.:

for /f "delims=" %%i in ('c:\cygwin\bin\date +%%Y%%m%%d.%%H%%M%%S') do set fileSuffix=%%i

Note the doubling of the %-marks in the format string. You need to do this, or you'll end up with a suffix of "mHS".
-----

You don't need the for loop in this example, either. In other situations, for /f is very, very useful, but for this, you can just do this [assuming your locale is English (United States)]:

set fileSuffix=%DATE:~-4%%DATE:~4,2%%DATE:~7,2%.%TIME:~0,2%%TIME:~3,2%%TIME:~6,2%
@REM %TIME% Puts a leading space on hours if < 10, change to 0
set fileSuffix=%fileSuffix: =0%

The big drawback is that %DATE% and %TIME% are formatted according to your locale, so this method of parsing isn't universal. :/

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Saturday, January 29, 2005 4:49 PM by Eric TF Bat
You have to admit that one reason for the weird circumlocutions you see in people's batch code is that the documentation is so woeful. Suppose I want to know how to extract the year from the DATE pseudovariable. What's the command to get that information? Why, it's explained in the help for the SET command. How obvious. And if I want to know the matching syntax for splitting the %0, %1 and other variables, where's that explained? So far the answer seems to be: in Raymond Chen's weblog.

I would dearly like to see something that explains all of it - pseudovars, the arcane and inane rules of expansion, what registry setting to tweak if you want command completion -- everything. I suggest the ideal name would be MAN - Microsoft's Arcane Nuances.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Sunday, January 30, 2005 5:35 AM by Alex Blekhman
2Eric TF Bat
I found this Usenet group "
microsoft.public.win2000.cmdprompt.admin" invaluable when dealing with CMD.EXE. There is much esoteric knowledge shared out there by very skillful individuals.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Sunday, January 30, 2005 2:05 PM by James
On a somewhat related topic, since a number of people have mentioned CD /D:

Why isn't /D idempotent (on Windows 2000, anyway)?

CD /D /D <fullPath>

does nothing.

This is problematic for scripts, because you don't know if someone has used doskey to alias CD to CD /D, and AFAICT there's no way for a script to unload doskey aliases.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Sunday, January 30, 2005 11:19 PM by ilm
Try running %windir%\help\ntcmds.chm - don't know if it covers everything though.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Monday, January 31, 2005 7:33 AM by Loz
On NT4:

> echo %CD%
%CD%

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Monday, January 31, 2005 8:15 AM by Ben Cooke
Loz,
If I'm reading the documentation correctly, %CD% is a pseudo-variable only available to set. It's not a real environment variable, so it's not generally available.

You can make it generally available like this, however:
set CD=%CD%

...but you must remember to update the variable every time you change the current working directory, of course.

It's been so long since I wrote batch files. I remember writing a pretty text-based menu system using ANSI.SYS and CHOICE in MS-DOS many moons ago. Fun times. Lots of the new additions made in CMD would have made life so much easier for me writing that!

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Monday, January 31, 2005 8:18 AM by Ben Cooke
Scratch my last comment. I didn't actually test to see if echo would honour the pseudo-variable on my Windows 2000 system, but it did. I think I'll refrain from commenting any further on this, because I'm just going to end up embarassing myself. ;)

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Monday, January 31, 2005 10:58 AM by Marcelo
Yes!

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Monday, January 31, 2005 4:01 PM by DavidE
Why the heck can't we just have backquotes in Windows batch? It's not like it's a new idea. I've been using them since I was a teenager, and I'm ancient!

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Monday, January 31, 2005 4:23 PM by Raymond Chen
You can - see "for /?" and "usebackq".

The problem is how to add these features without breaking existing batch files.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Tuesday, February 01, 2005 12:35 PM by GAM
Don't forget to handle spaces in path and file names. Note for example the difference between how cd and chdir operates with and without command extensions enabled.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Tuesday, February 01, 2005 4:43 PM by DavidE
You miss my point, Raymond. I should be able to use backquotes with "set" or even some random exe like notepad, as in "notepad.exe `lookformyfiles.exe`". I don't mind having to call some "setbatchoptions" commmand to turn the feature on if I have to. Don't get me wrong - I'll use "for" to do this, but I'm much more likely to require every machine I work on to have perl or some other tool I have to support.

# re: Capturing the current directory from a batch file

Tuesday, February 01, 2005 5:02 PM by Raymond Chen
But if you turn the feature on, it will break batch files that weren't written to be compatible with "setbatchoptions". For example, a batch file that says

echo `Hello'

will now get an "unmatched backquotes" error instead of printing `Hello'. Maybe batch file backwards compatibility isn't important to you, but it is to an awful lot of corporate system administrators who deploy batch files throughout their company.

If you want ksh you know where to find it.
http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2005/01/24/359496.aspx

# Retrieve the location of the running script or application

Saturday, February 25, 2006 2:20 PM by Saveen Reddy's blog
The problem: where's the script?
Your script or application needs to locate other files or directories...

# Don't forget to pass the current directory along with the command line to your single-instance program

Friday, June 29, 2007 4:20 PM by The Old New Thing

Otherwise file names won't resolve.

# The Tomes Of Experience &raquo; Switching an IIS website home directory from the command line

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 9:06 AM by The Tomes Of Experience &raquo; Switching an IIS website home directory from the command line

PingBack from http://www.xerxesb.com/2008/switching-an-iis-website-home-directory-from-the-command-line/

# Getting the current working directory from DOS or Batch file at Mark Needham

Tuesday, August 12, 2008 5:40 PM by Getting the current working directory from DOS or Batch file at Mark Needham

PingBack from http://www.markhneedham.com/blog/2008/08/12/getting-the-current-working-directory-from-dos-or-batch-file/

New Comments to this post are disabled
 
Page view tracker