Concatenation in windows shell not working

Question

apparently this batch file should return the concatenation of the input files given as arguments, but it is not working:

set files=
for %%i in (%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8) do (
    echo %%i
    set files=%files% %%i
)

echo "the file list is %files%"

when invoked with:

mybatchfile.bat example1.txt example2.txt

the expected result should be:

example1.txt
example2.txt
the file list is example1.txt example2.txt

but in the final line only has "example2.txt". Any idea???

Delayed expansion. [This](http://stackoverflow.com/a/30177832/2861476) should help — MC ND, Sep 11 '15 at 13:43
do you know `%*`? (will give you the complete list of parameters. Just try `echo %*`) — Stephan, Sep 13 '15 at 06:53

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 12 '15 at 17:11

You need to enable delayed variable expansion (note the expansion !files! in the following code):

set files=
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
for %%i in (%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8) do (
    echo %%i
    set files=!files! %%i
)
endlocal & set files=%files%
echo "the file list is %files%"

Concatenation in windows shell not working

1 Answers1