A follow up to my question about extracting delimiters from a variable... I am afraid it is a bit more basic but I am continually getting either syntax errors or logic errors (i.e. the code does not evaluate the logical operations properly). Here is the code with the syntax error: SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS :processcmdline :: :: Checks to see if the wall port was entered :: as a command line arguments and appends :: it to the OUTPUT file if they exist :: ECHO OFF >holding.txt IF NOT DEFINED %1 GOTO :getwallport ECHO Wall Port: %1 >>holding.txt IF NOT DEFINED %2 GOTO :getbuilding ECHO Building Name: %2 >>holding.txt IF NOT DEFINED %3 GOTO :getroomnum ECHO Room Number: %3 >>holding.txt Exit /B 0 :getwallport :: :: This input collects the wall port :: set choice= set /p choice=Enter the Port Number set wallport=%choice% ECHO Wall Port: %wallport% >>holding.txt :getbuilding :: :: This input collects the building info :: set choice= set /p choice=Enter the building name set building=%choice% ECHO Building Name: %building% >>holding.txt :getroomnum :: :: This input collects the room number :: set choice= set /p choice=Enter the room number set roomnum=%choice% ECHO Room Number: %roomnum% >>holding.txt Exit /B 0 It is supposed to be simple... if there are existing command line variables (%1 %2 %3) then output those to a text file. If they do not exist then ask the user for them with the SET /P command. The SET /P portion works great, it is the IF statement initially that is driving me nuts. Thanks for any guidance. -BA

If not defined is testing it the contents of %1 is a defined variable, not it %1 is defined. Something like this is probably what your after. if "%~1"=="" GOTO :getwallport

That did not do it but it did fix my syntax problems AND it lead me to figure out what the logic problem was. In the program I get to :processcmdline via a CALL and I was not passing the command line arguments to the CALL. When I modified my statement to read CALL :processcmdline %1 %2 %3 everything began to work automagically! Thanks for the code, it cleaned up alot my code and lead me to the solution!