Zystkmt

echo|set /p= can output a variable without a newline.

I am trying to loop a text file like this

for /f %%a in (zen.txt) do (

    set var=%%a

    echo !var!

    echo|set /p=!var!

)

There are some lines with only one ", for example:

"he said...

echo outputs the line like above correctly while echo|set /p= output nothing.

Is it possible to escape double quotes in a variable when using echo|set /p=.

We will need to provide set/p with additional quotes to consume. You can try with something like (without the test file creation, of course)

@echo off

    setlocal enableextensions disabledelayedexpansion



    rem TESTING - Create a input file

    >zen.txt (

        echo "He said...

        echo It was not me!

        echo It was "the thing"!

        echo ...

        echo ^& it was all"  ( The end )

    )



    for /f "delims=" %%a in (zen.txt) do (

        <nul set /p="%%a "

    )

echo|set /p simulates a return key press to terminate the set/p prompt, but it creates separate cmd instances for each side of the pipe making it slow. A <nul input redirection is enough to get the same result but faster and with less resources usage.

set /p is a bit nasty with handling whitespaces, quotes and equal signs.

A quote at the beginning or the end has to be doubled, BUT when you want to display quotes, the expression should be enclosed in quotes, too.

To display a single quote use

<nul set /p ="""

set /p seems to strip one time the outer quotes.

Your code can be changed to <NUL set /p="!var!" that should work with normal text and also with quotes.

If the text starts with whitespaces, they will be dropped. (But not up to XP, there set /p "= Hello" shows the spaces).

set /p seems to use two times a quote remover.
First for the extended set syntax
<nul set /p "=hello" Text after the last quote will be dropped

But also for the content, the outer quotes will be dropped
<nul set /p ="hello" Text after the last quote will be dropped

And even combining both works
<nul set /p "="hello" Text after the last inner quote will be dropped "

Note: I use <nul set /p, it's much faster, because the echo | set /p version uses a pipe and spawns two new cmd.exe instances. (Already mentioned by MC ND)