🚀 go-pugleaf

Amongst the myriad shortcomings of MSDOS we must include the pair:

  *  FIND does not return an errorlevel to confirm a match
  *  COPY does not copy a file of length 0

Combined, these two can be used to overcome the limitation of no errorlevel
setting. When the output of FIND is redirected to a file, then failure to
match is indicated by the creation of a null file. Any attempt using COPY
to duplicate that file will be unsuccessful whenever the file is of size 0.

type %1 | find "xyz" >tmp1
copy tmp1 tmp0 > \nul
if exist tmp0 echo %1 contained the string xyz

In practice, the above will need to be preceded by: if exist tmp0 del tmp0
and the temporary files subsequently deleted by something like del tmp?
As always, use of a RAM drive for all temporary files is adviseable.
--
John Savage               koala@sydney.dialix.com.au