I suspect this is a particularly elementary question I'm about to ask; please forgive me. I am merely trying to echo variables to text files, but when the variable is a single-digit number, it seems to mess up how it writes to the file, as in the example below: set FIRST=5 set SECOND=6 echo %FIRST%>"C:\first.txt" echo %SECOND%>"C:\second.txt" The resulting text files end up blank! It looks like it's adding a leading space to the variable when it tries to write to the file, which then just seems to write a blank file. The text files must only contain the numbers (no quotes or extra characters), and the numbers won't always be single-digits. Any thoughts on how/why this is happening? Thanks!!

Don't know why it's happening, but I do have a workaround: echo.%FIRST%>"C:\first.txt" echo.%SECOND%>"C:\second.txt"

I guess that is because this does not work either : echo 2> test.txt " 2>" is a system-interpreted string ... Undo that by means of this: echo.2> test.txt 2= error output, ex. using : 2> 1=normal output, but the number 1 is not actually written, ex. 1> 3, 4, ... are other reserved types ?! Never had that problem ; never thought about it, but indeed, this will not work: echo 2> test.txt Hi there.

[message deleted because by the time I pressed the Post button, someone else had already posted what I was going to say]

Razor2.3 - Huzzah! Thanks a bunch; it works great!!! User123456789 & klint - Yah, I hadn't ever run into this problem before, but that makes perfect sense. I'll remember to try to steer clear of this in the future. Thanks!

Hehe, this is funny C:\>del test.txt C:\>echo a 1> test.txt C:\>type test.txt a C:\> Hi there.

The problem is due to how NT cmd.exe processes the std out streams, i.e. 1> is stdout, 2> is stderr and more. So if you want to echo a single digit you have to prefix it with the caret (^). Referring to the original post the following solve the issue If %first% lss 10 ( echo.^%first%> C:\first.txt ) else ( echo.%first%> C:\first.txt)