How to Execute For Command-line on Multiple Files

With this mini tutorial i would give examples of how For command can be executed for multiple files. For command-line conditionally perform a command several times on several files or individual file.




The %UserProfile% is a environment variable which holds a value of a directory path of the user profile  (C:\Users\{username} or "Documents and Settings"). You can replace the  %UserProfile% variable with any directory path that you want to execute For command and copy all movie files to X:\Movies directory. Above For command-line will copy all movie files with .mov,  .avi,  .wmv,   .mpg,  .mpeg,  .mp4,  .flv extensions. The asterisk symbol (*) is known as place holder for filenames or folders.

When you execute the above "For" command-line right from the Command Prompt by copying it and pasting it will work, but when you create a batch file using this code, won’t work, because when you are using it in a  batch file, you are supposed to use %% preceding the variable name, in this case the following code will  work if you try to execute as a batch.










Below For command-line finds all *.mp2 files in current directory  changes its .mp2 extension to .mpeg extension.  The "%~na.mpeg" command  expands %a variable to a file name only and appends .mpeg extension.









Below For command-line renames all .chm files store at "C:\Windows\Help\mui\041F" directory, the %nxa.tr expands only file name and extension from %a variable and adds ".tr" as a file extension.








Below For command-line use for combining all text files in same directory into one text file. The directory of the Command Prompt run forum is where For command-line is executed for all text files in that directory. You can use CD command to change Command Prompt directory path (CD C:\Users).