Pandoc Windows batch file builds wrong path openBinary file does not exist

Question

THE ISSUE

This may just stem from a lack of deep understanding of Windows batch file coding.

I am trying to write a simple one-line batch file that will process every file in a directory using pandoc to convert all doc or docx (MS Word) files to markdown (.md) files. When I run my batch file I get the following error:

pandoc: C:_ALL\_ALL\accomp\testing-accomp-2017.05\20170505.md: openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

I get one of these errors for each file in the directory (around 25, or so).

The directory I'm running my command in looks like this:

C:\_ALL\!accomp\testing-accomp-2017.05

As you can see, for some reason the _ALL is appearing twice. The path it is showing me isn't right for some reason and I'm not sure if it is a pandoc issue or a CMD batch file programming issue.

MY CODE

Here is the code for my batch file:

@echo OFF

:: [Not sure what this does, but have read that it is necessary]
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion

:: MAIN
FOR /r "." %%i IN (*.doc *.docx) DO pandoc -f rst -t markdown "%%~fi" -o "%%~dpni.md"

:: End with a pause so user can copy any text from screen.
ECHO. Done. Press any key to terminate program
PAUSE>NUL

Now, I'm not certain what all these lines of code do, and they may be entirely unnecessary for all I know. However, the main and most important code here is the one that starts with For ..., which is inspired by this Stack Overflow post:

• Batch processing Pandoc conversions in Windows

WHAT I'VE TRIED ALREADY

Basically there are about four variations of the same answer in the above linked post and I've tried each of those variations.

Answer 1

The error is caused by delayed expansion and the exclamation mark ! in directory name !accomp.

The command line to execute by FOR expands during execution with file 20170505.doc to:

pandoc -f rst -t markdown "C:\_ALL\!accomp\testing-accomp-2017.05\20170505.doc" -o "C:\_ALL\!accomp\testing-accomp-2017.05\20170505.md"

This command line is parsed by Windows command processor a second time before execution because of enabled delayed environment variable expansion, searching for !variable! reference and replacing them with value of referenced variables.

The string !accomp\testing-accomp-2017.05\20170505.doc" -o "C:\_ALL\! is completely misinterpreted here because of the exclamation marks. So finally executed is:

pandoc -f rst -t markdown "C:\_ALL\\_ALL\accomp\testing-accomp-2017.05\20170505.md"

And the file C:\_ALL\\_ALL\accomp\testing-accomp-2017.05\20170505.md does not exist.

The solution is removing setlocal enabledelayedexpansion as not needed here because of no environment variable used on FOR command line.

@ECHO OFF

FOR /r "." %%i IN (*.doc *.docx) DO pandoc.exe -f rst -t markdown "%%i" -o "%%~dpni.md"

:: End with a pause so user can copy any text from screen.
ECHO Done. Press any key to terminate program ...
PAUSE>NUL

The loop variable i holds here already the full qualified file name. Therefore "%%~fi" can be replaced by "%%i".

And it is better to use ECHO/ instead of ECHO. although neither . nor / is needed here. See DosTips forum topic ECHO. FAILS to give text or blank line - Instead use ECHO/ for the reason.