Batch file for loop executes on one machine only

Question

I have written the following .bat file, and it runs perfectly on my Windows 2000 machine, but will not run on my Windows 7 or Windows XP machines. Basically it just loops through the current directory and runs a checksum program which returns the checksum. The output of the program is saved to a text file and then formatted to remove the checksum of the output file.

@Echo Off

for /r %%f in (*.txt) do crc32sum.exe %%f >> all_checksums.txt

ren all_checksums.txt old.txt
findstr /v /e /c:"all_checksums.txt" old.txt > all_checksums.txt
del old.txt

When I run this file on my Win2k PC with a bunch of text files and the crc32sum.exe in a folder, it outputs the file. On other machines it outputs a blank file. I turned Echo on and kept only the for loop line and found that the output from executing the crc32sum.exe is nothing. If you manually run the crc32sum.exe file it outputs the checksum no problem.

Any ideas as to how to fix this?

EDIT: Here is a link to the software: http://www.di-mgt.com.au/src/digsum-1.0.1.zip

EDIT2: New development, it seems that the file works if the path of the folder has no spaces in it i.e. C:\temp or C:\inetpub\ftproot or C:\users\admin\Desktop\temp. Does anyone know how I can make this work with paths that have spaces? %%~f doesnt work it says unexpected.

Answer 1

Try this modified batch code which worked on Windows XP SP3 x86:

@echo off
goto CheckOutput

rem Command DEL does not terminate with an exit code greater 0
rem if the deletion of a file failed. Therefore the output to
rem stderr must be evaluated to find out if deletion was
rem successful or (for a single file) the file existence is
rem checked once again. For details read on Stack Overflow
rem the answer http://stackoverflow.com/a/33403497/3074564

rem The deletion of the file was successful if file created
rem from output message has size 0 and therefore the temp
rem file can be deleted and calculation of the CRC32 sums
rem can be started.

:DeleteOutput
del /F "all_checksums.txt" >nul 2>"%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp"
for %%E in ("%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp") do set "FileSize=%%~zE"

if "%FileSize%" == "0" (
    set "FileSize="
    del "%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp"
    goto CalcCRC32
)

set "FileSize="
echo %~nx0: Failed to delete file %CD%\all_checksums.txt
echo.
type "%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp"
del "%TEMP%\DelErrorMessage.tmp"
echo.
echo Is this file opened in an application?
echo.
set "Retry=N"
set /P "Retry=Retry (N/Y)? "
if /I "%Retry%" == "Y" (
    set "Retry="
    cls
    goto CheckOutput
)
set "Retry="
goto :EOF

:CheckOutput
if exist "all_checksums.txt" goto DeleteOutput

:CalcCRC32
for /R %%F in (*.txt) do (
    if /I not "%%F" == "%CD%\all_checksums.txt" (
        crc32sum.exe "%%F" >>"all_checksums.txt"
    )
)

The output file in current directory is deleted if already existing from a previous run. Extra code is added to verify if deletion was successful and informing the user about a failed deletion with giving the user the possibility to retry after closing the file in an application if that is the reason why deletion failed.

The FOR command searches because of option /R recursive in current directory and all its subdirectories for files with extension txt. The name of each found file with full path always without double quotes is hold in loop variable F for any text file found in current directory or any subdirectory.

The CRC32 sum is calculated by 32-bit console application crc32sum in current directory for all text files found with the exception of the output file all_checksums.txt in current directory. The output of this small application is redirected into file all_checksums.txt with appending the single output line to this file.

It is necessary to enclose the file name with path in double quotes because even with no *.txt file containing a space character or one of the special characters &()[]{}^=;!'+,`~ in its name, the path of the file could contain a space or one of those characters.

For the files

C:\Temp\test 1.txt
C:\Temp\test 2.txt
C:\Temp\test_3.txt
C:\Temp\TEST\123-9.txt
C:\Temp\TEST\abc.txt
C:\Temp\TEST\hello.txt
C:\Temp\TEST\hellon.txt
C:\Temp\Test x\test4.txt
C:\Temp\Test x\test5.txt

the file C:\Temp\all_checksums.txt contains after batch execution:

f44271ac *test 1.txt
624cbdf9 *test 2.txt
7ce469eb *test_3.txt
cbf43926 *123-9.txt
352441c2 *abc.txt
0d4a1185 *hello.txt
38e6c41a *hellon.txt
1b4289fa *test4.txt
f44271ac *test5.txt

For understanding the used commands and how they work, open a command prompt window, execute there the following commands, and read entirely all help pages displayed for each command very carefully.

• cls /?
• del /?
• echo /?
• for /?
• goto /?
• if /?
• rem /?
• set /?
• type /?

One of the help pages output on running for /? informs about %~I, %~fI, %~dI, %~pI, %~nI, %~xI, %~sI, %~aI, %~tI, %~zI.

Using in a batch file f (in lower case) as loop variable and referencing it with %%~f is a syntax error as command processor expects next the loop variable. %%~ff would be right, but could be different to %%~fI (name of a file/folder with full path and extension without quotes) in comparison to %%~I (string without surrounding quotes).

It is not advisable to use (those) small letters as loop variable. It is better to use upper case letters or character # as loop variable. The loop variable and also those modifiers are case sensitive while nearly everything else in a batch file is case insensitive.