Windows 10: How to get my own path in a batch-file.

Default answer is %~dp0. And most times this will work fine. But there is a bug in cmd.exe which will prevent this from working correctly under certain circumstances if you use double quotes to call the batch. Double quotes are necessary if the name or path of the batch file contains spaces. So for convenience everybody adds double quotes on all filenames. I struggled very long with this bug. This example will show the bug: Create this batch file, name it "z z.cmd" and put it in a folder specified by %path% or f.ex. in C:\Windows. @Echo off echo.%~x0. echo.%~dpnx0. goto :eo

:)

 

Batch files fail pathing and [%04d]

1 When running in Administrator mode batch files automatically take on the Windows\System32 folder unless a prefix is added to the top of the file.

command example: copy file1.txt "C:\Users\Public\Test\."

result copies file in current folder to "C:\Users\Public\Test\file1.txt"

result from batch file as admin is an error stating "File not found" because Admin mode attempts to call commands listed in file from [Windows\System32] folder.

include [cd %~dp0] at top of batch file to ensure commands run from the folder the batch file resides in.

2 When running ffmpeg.exe in one folder and writing files to another folder from a batch file Windows automatically pastes the entire path and the batch file name prior to every attempted file write.

ffmpeg command example :

bin\ffmpeg.exe -i "C:\Users\JoeMatize\Videos\Logitech Webcam\video 3.wmv" -r 15 "frames-%04d.bmp"

then windows creates 15 frames per second naming files [frames-0001.bmp] through [frames-0015.bmp] for the 1st second and continuing through the entire file

But ffmCmd.bat file contains the command attempts to create the output file as...

"C:\_dev\_Video\FFMPeg_Zeranoe\ffmpeg-20160517-git-af3e944-win64-static\ffmCmd.bat4d.bmp"

ffmpeg fails when it is unable to acquire a new name for the sequential files.

is there another command that will fix the batch call to ffmpeg, like the one that fixes the administrative mode path?

When will Microsoft fix the batch files so they work consistently across the board?

 

Batch Files Knowledge Base

Don't use batch files very much but one I find useful is for creating a list of files in a directory.
Just copy the text below into Notepad and save as Filelist.bat

dir /a /-p /o:gen >filelist.txt

When you run it from a folder it will create a Filelist.txt file,in the same folder, that lists all the files in that folder.Useful when you are too lazy to type all the files out yourself.

 

Batch Files Knowledge Base

Very nice and usefull thanks for contributing.