I have a txt file containing one line of text which looks something like this : " JDOE <03> UNIQUE 10.123.10.247 362" - only without then inverted commas. The various pieces of text can vary, but will always follow the same format. I want to extract the IP address to a variable in a batch file - any ideas on how I can do it? Is this possible?? thanks!

Hi Deirdre, There must be a way in XP with the cmd extensions, tokens and all that. But it's beyond me. Here's what I've got. It uses two small utilities, CHANGE & PREFIX. #### @echo off > quit.bat @echo echo %%1 %%2 %%3 %%4 %%5 %%6 %%7 %%8 %%9 >> quit.bat echo. echo This is the world famous %0.bat echo. echo copyright 2004 ThaiGuides.com All rights reserved echo. echo Free for private use. Others email: Consult@ThaiGuides.com echo. echo built and tested on windoze 2000; may act funny on other versions echo. echo. Purpose - get ip from file into var ::********************************************************************* if %1'==' quit which file? change %1 32 13,10 echo. echo. find "." < %1 > ## prefix "set MYvar=" <##> IPset.bat call IPset echo MYvar=%MYvar% ### Note: It wraps around in this little forum editor window, but I think you can figure it out.

Thanks, Mechanix, gives me another avenue to explore.. Dos is new to me, I'm afraid, I'm more used to unix and I wasn't very good at shell programming in that either! ;)

Hi This might help if IP address the same number of characters. @echo on rem set IP var to file contents set /p IP=<IP.txt rem Get Last (Rightmost) 17 characters set IPAdr=%IP:~-17% echo %IPAdr%

If you are used to Unix and are going to be doing a lot of this type of thing, it might be worth downloading 'cygwin'. It is a shell that let's you run unix commands on windows PCs. I use it all of the time on my windows boxes. Just google for it. IT will be easy to find.