Hello, I have about 100 text files. They are full of extra stuff that needs to be cleaned up. The stuff is one or more blank lines, trailing spaces, comment lines that start with a "#" and one byte that I want to change from 0 to 1. Goal. 1.delete blank lines. 2.search and replace string 3.delete comment lines. 4.remove trailing spaces. :cleanup.bat @Echo Off setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion For /F "tokens=* delims=" %%A in ('dir /b *.cfg') Do ( Call :sub1 %%A ) Goto :eof :sub1 findstr /R /V "^$" %1 >t1.txt :grep -ve "^$" %1 >t1.txt findstr /R /V /C:"mp_multiplespawn 0" t1.txt >t2.txt :sed -e "s/tiplespawn 0/tiplespawn 1/" t1.txt >t2.txt Del %1 For /F "eol=# tokens=1,2" %%B in (t2.txt) Do ( If not %%C.==. (Echo %%B %%C>>%1) Else Echo %%B>>%1) Del t1.txt t2.txt I put this batch file in the directory with the messy text files and double click it in windows explorer. It reads the directory looking for the *.cfg files. Reads a file uses grep to strip the blank lines. sed to search for unique text and replace the one byte. An unfortunate side effect of using the GNU UNIX utilities grep, is that now the end of each line has only LF (0A) In notepad it looks like a little box. And all lines run together. So now it rewrites the output file and adds a CRLF pair (0D0A) to each line, good time to delete comment lines and remove trailing spaces. Can anyone think of a cleaner way to do this? Maybe without using the GNU UNIX utilities and/or reducing the need for multiple temp files. Have commented out grep and sed. Using findstr to delete the blank lines and matching line. Have not figured out the logic for testing the error level and checking the character offset before each matching line to develop a replace string routine. Any help? Note: I tried using a free utility change v9.11 and found it to be problematic. The control file had to be carefully constructed with the sequence of /from /to statements in just the right order or the output files would still have blank lines or spaces. Then I would have to adjust the sequence for the next group of files. And for whatever reason change would not execute when copied to another directory. If running in a command prompt sometimes the screen would become garbled when calling change within a For loop. Plus it would overwrite the original file and change the file name to all caps. Maybe used to strip all spaces an replace them with smiles. partial sample file: ## SvenCo-op map CFG file - HL SP Map ## Map By: Valve nomaptrans c1a0a nextmap c1a0e skill 2 mp_multiplespawn 0 mp_radiovoice 1 mp_allowgaussjump 0 killnpc 0 nomedkit ## Setting of 1 forces players to respawn about a sec after death mp_forcerespawn 0 Thanks,

if you have GNU awk, you can do this: [code] gawk ' /^$/ { next } /^#/ {next} / $/ {next } /mp_multiplespawn/ {$2 = 1} { print } ' "file" [/code] any other tools you have like Perl/Python/Java etc can also easily do this kind of text processing.

The following batch script achieves what you want @Echo Off SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion For %%J in (*.cfg) Do ( For /F "tokens=* delims=" %%A in (%%J) Do ( Set Row=%%A If not "!Row:~0,1!"=="#" ( :LOOP If "!Row:~-1,1!"==" " ( (Set Row=!Row:~0,-1!) & GoTo :LOOP) Set Row=!Row:tiplespawn 0=tiplespawn 1! Echo !Row!>> %%~nJ.new)))

Hi IVO, After several hours I made one that 'works'. Yours is much better. [surprise] ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Hi M2, ever ready to back to sixties and get a "Drag Race" with you, XMK vs Duetto, Jacqueline Bisset as gift for the winnner!

Thank You All, for your reply. IVO that is really slick. It dies silently on about six of the files. When there is a trailing space after the last token on a line. So I made a small change, to remove trailing spaces. Not exactly silent, makes a file named "%~nJ.new)))" Which contains the line it choked on. :slick_ivo.bat @Echo Off SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion For %%J in (*.cfg) Do ( For /F "tokens=1,2" %%A in (%%J) Do ( If not %%B.==. ( Set Row=%%A %%B) Else Set Row=%%A If not "!Row:~0,1!"=="#" ( :LOOP If "!Row:~-1,1!"==" " ( (Set Row=!Row:~0,-1!) & GoTo :LOOP) Set Row=!Row:tiplespawn 0=tiplespawn 1! Echo !Row!>>%%~nJ.new))) Also since I really want to keep the original file names I call it from another batch file. slick_ivo runs then the orig files are deleted and the *new files are renamed to *cfg. :cleanup.bat call slick_ivo.bat del *.cfg ren *.new *.cfg

Hello, Seems like using a goto inside a for loop, breaks it and %J becomes undefined. This works a little better, to remove one or more trailing spaces. @Echo Off SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion For %%J in (*.cfg) Do ( For /F "eol=# tokens=* delims=" %%A in (%%J) Do ( Set Row=%%A call :loop Set Row=!Row:tiplespawn 0=tiplespawn 1! Echo !Row!>> %%~nJ.new)) :loop If "!Row:~-1,1!"==" " ( Set Row=!Row:~0,-1!) & goto :loop goto :EOF ---- Yet here is my solution. setting eol=# ignores comment lines. using tokens=1,2 and spaces as a delimiter strips all trailing spaces. And saves me the two extra if stataments. @Echo Off SetLocal EnableDelayedExpansion For %%J in (*.cfg) Do ( For /F "eol=# tokens=1,2" %%A in (%%J) Do ( If not %%B.==. ( Set Row=%%A %%B) Else Set Row=%%A Set Row=!Row:tiplespawn 0=tiplespawn 1! Echo !Row!>>%%~nJ.new))