Hello. I'm a complete beginner at scripting and would like some help. I've got about 1 000 .txt files in a folder and I would like to delete characters in the first line of each file, from position 10 to 18, using a batch script. I can't seem to figure it out by myself. Thanks in advance.

@echo off & setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%a in ('dir/b *.txt') do ( set N=0 for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%i in (%%a) do ( set /a N+=1 if !N! equ 1 ( set str=%%i set front=!str:~0,9! set back=!str:~18,99! echo !front!!back! > # ) else ( echo %%i >> # ) ) copy # %%a ) ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

Thanks! Working fine, the only problem is that it was in the second line I needed to delete characters. My mistake... Could you help me with that as well?

chande if !N! equ 1 to: if !N! equ 2 ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

I have to ask one more thing, what if I want to delete the first 10 characters (spaces) from the beginning of the file?

You need to post the first few lines here. Then maybe we can do something. ===================================== If at first you don't succeed, you're about average. M2

The lines doesn't look right when I paste them in the message box... Maybe if I describe it a bit better. Each .txt file starts with 60 spaces. What I want to do is delete the first 10 of these spaces.