Counting files using a batch file

Question

I tried the following code in a .bat file to count the number of files in a directory:

for /f %%a in ('dir /A-D /B /S | find /C /V ""') do set FILECOUNT=%%a
echo %FILECOUNT%
pause

However, it doesn't work and doesn't even pause. It instead flashes something like ": was unexpected at this time". If I just write

dir /A-D /B /S | find /C /V ""
pause

It works fine and displays the number of files but I want to save this number into a variable. What am I doing wrong?

Dennis van Gils · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-02 23:43:20Z

4

You need to escape the pipe, so

@echo off
for /f %%a in ('dir /A-D /B /S ^| find /C /V ""') do set FILECOUNT=%%a
echo %FILECOUNT%
pause

answered Feb 2, 2016 at 23:43

Dennis van Gils

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1 Comment

@J.Doe if my answer solved your problem, you should click the check to the left of it so people searching on google for the same problem can find it.