How to read a text file into an environment variable?

Question

I have a one line text file (it will always be just one line). For example:

helloworld.txt contains "hello world"

I want to read this into an environment variable via the command prompt.

so Set MyVar=somehow reads helloworld.txt

Does anyone know how to do this?

Possible duplicate of ... http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3068929/how-to-read-file-contents-into-a-variable-in-a-batch-file — SteveC, Nov 26 '14 at 12:13
[Windows cmd and MS-DOS are very different](https://superuser.com/q/451432/241386). There's neither `for /f` nor `set /P` in DOS, and of course there can't be such a long name as `helloworld.txt` — phuclv, Feb 13 '20 at 00:40

score 10 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 27 '12 at 16:45

10

set /P VARNAME=<FILENAME.TXT

This will only work with first line and will handle everything up to the end of the line.

answered Aug 27 '12 at 16:45

Jason Swager

agent-j · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-28T19:18:24.833

7

This only works because you want the last line (or a one-line file).

for /f "delims=" %f in (helloworld.txt) DO Set MyVar=%f

For more information, use

for /?

edited Jun 28 '11 at 19:18

answered Jun 09 '11 at 18:14

agent-j

2

note that if you put this in a batch file use %% instead of % – Shai UI Jun 09 '11 at 19:11
this does not work for a sentence unfortunately, it only reads the first wrd – Shai UI Jun 28 '11 at 18:57
@foreyez, I changed the delimiter `for /f "delims=^" %f in (helloworld.txt) DO Set MyVar=%f`. This wouldn't work if the string had a `^` in it, but you can pick whatever character you want. – agent-j Jun 28 '11 at 19:03

2 Answers2