Search a string in a text file in batch script

Question

How can I search a string in a text file line by line and when found a match, copy that whole line where the match was found into a variable?

Basically, I have a text file that contains the address/path of all sub-folders in a folder. I want to search for a string into this text file (the string will match only a part of a line) and if there is a match I want to copy into a variable that whole line.

The string comes from a file name and once there is a match in the text file I want to use the sub-folder address to move the file there.

This is what I have done until now:

@ECHO off
::Reads all the folders and subfolders existing in the "root1" folder and   writes the path for each foleder/subfolder into the "1.txt" file
dir /b /s /a:d "...\root1" > "...\1.txt"

::Reads all the files existing in "root2" folder and writes the path of each file into the "2.txt" file
dir /s /b "...\root2\" > "...\2.txt"

SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion

::reads the last file path from the "2.txt" and asign it to a variable
for /f "delims=" %%x in (...\2.txt) do set Build=%%x
set "source=%Build%"
echo %source%

::from (...\...\...\...\a_b.txt) reads the name of the file (a_b.txt) without extension (a_b) and swap the  letter and outputs (b\a) into text file "7.txt"
FOR /F "tokens=6 delims=\" %%G IN (...\2.txt) DO echo %%G > ...\3.txt
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=." %%G IN (...\3.txt) DO echo %%G > ...\4.txt
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=_" %%G IN (...\4.txt) DO echo %%G > ...\5.txt
FOR /F "tokens=2 delims=_" %%G IN (...\4.txt) DO echo %%G > ...\6.txt
FOR /F %%G IN (...\5.txt) DO set "two=%%G"
FOR /F %%H IN (...\6.txt) DO set "one=%%H"
echo %one%\%two% > ...\7.txt

::assign the content (one line) from "7.txt" file to a variable
FOR /F %%G IN (...\7.txt) DO set "third=%%G"
echo %third% 

::should search the string from "third" variable in the "1.txt" and when found a match copy the respective line into a variable and put it into "8.txt"
FOR /F  %%a IN ('FINDSTR /x "%third%" ...\1.txt') DO set "xz=%%b"
echo %xz% > ...\8.txt

endlocal

Can you provide some example files and describe step-by-step what you want to see happen using those example files? — Jeff Zeitlin, Jan 10 '17 at 12:35
`for /F "delims=" %%M in ('find /I "search string" ^< "textfile.txt"') do echo %%I` -- each line containing a match is supplied by `%%I` in the [`for` loop](http://ss64.com/nt/for.html); instead of [`find`](http://ss64.com/nt/find.html) you could also use [`findstr`](http://ss64.com/nt/findstr.html)... — aschipfl, Jan 10 '17 at 13:02
That's not helping. Edit your question to add helpful details and format them as code for readability. — Robin Koch, Jan 10 '17 at 13:20
FOR /F %%a IN ('FIND /I "%third%" ^< ...\7.txt') DO set "xz=%%a" echo %xz% > ...\8.txt outputs the variable "third". It is not what I want to achieve. I want all the line. — GEEE, Jan 10 '17 at 13:34
Your batch seems overly complex. But without more real world examples it is difficult to grep what you are looking for. — , Jan 11 '17 at 02:29
I said is not working, aschipfl. I was wrong and I very much thank you. — GEEE, Jan 11 '17 at 11:09

score 6 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

You can accomplish this with a series of commands. You can use the command "find" to search a file and return the matching lines.

find "search term" fileToSearch > output.txt

Here, I've given a template command to search a file and redirect its output to a file.

Here is a previous article that shows how to read a file line by line in DOS. batch script - read line by line

for /f "tokens=*" %%a in (input.txt) do (
  echo line=%%a
  do something
)

I think for "do something" you would "move" the file to the directory and break out of the loop, possibly with a "goto label".

Search a string in a text file in batch script

1 Answers1