Hello

Firt of all, I'm not very used in programming, so sorry if I'm not as specific as I should be.
I wrote a Bat-Script on a Windows 2003 Server that reads the lines of a csv-file, puts it ordered in another csv-file and writes it all into a MySQL-Database. What i couldnt do so far was to change the Date and Time that it fits for the MySQL DATETIME-Field.

The lines in my SourceFile.csv look like this:
any,thing,13.11.2007 04:17:00,and,some,more

I take all these lines with the command:
FOR /F "usebackq tokens=1-9 skip=4 delims=," %%a in ("D:\SourceFile.csv") DO (
ECHO %%a_%%b,%%c,%%d,%%e,%%f,%%g,%%h,%%i >> D:\NewFile.csv )

what I need to fit the MySQL-Field is:
any,thing,2007-11-13 04:17:00,and,some,more

Can this be done in the same FOR-command? And if so, how? And if not, how then? I'm really stuck, tried it for hours today but with no success. If you have any idea or solutions, i'd appreciate it very much.

Thanks a lot!
Regards
Daniel

It is better to do this in a more appropriate language, with good text-processing abilities, such as Awk, Sed, Python or Perl. All of these are available on the Windows platform.

If you must use cmd.exe (e.g. if you haven't got time to learn any of the above), read on.

Instead of using append-redirection (>>) inside the FOR loop, take the redirection outside (put it after the FOR loop's closing bracket. That way, you will only open, write, flush the buffers & close the file once. Instead of after every line.

In your code, you are successfully processing everything but the date. To process the date, just use an inner FOR /F loop:

FOR /F "tokens=1-3* delims=- " %%k in ("%%c") do echo %%a_%%b,%%m-%%l-%%k %%n,%%d,%%e,...

Note that %%k to %%n come from the inner loop and %%a to %%i come from the outer loop, but all are used in the same ECHO command.

Disclaimer: I haven't tested this.

Warning: this can break in so many ways, it just ain't funny. Like klint said, pick a better text parsing language. Even VBScript, if you must remain Windows native.

FOR /F "usebackq skip=4 tokens=1-5* delims=,. " %%a in ("D:\SourceFile.csv") DO (
ECHO %%a_%%b,%%e-%%d-%%c %%f)

Thanks a lot KLINT and RAZOR.
Finally I took Razor's solution and it just works the way it should.

@klint
Thanks also für the hint to take the redirection outside the FOR loop.

@Razor
Dont know whats the meaning of your warning. What can break in here? Using another language is not an option at the moment cause I dont know any of them.

Thanks again guys, you helped me!
Greetings from Switzerland
Daniel