Integrating the output of 2+ programs?

Thanks, harkin banks! Some questions-- 1. Batch doesn't seem to have a way of setting a variable to the output of a program without using an intermediate file; on bash, I could do myvar=`systeminfo`, but that doesn't work here. Do I just not know how to do this in batch? 2. systeminfo outputs something like 3KB of information; I thought DOS only had 255 bytes of address space? 3. Doesn't simply concatenating the two preserve the automatic trailing LF/newline which breaks the table in the first place?

Aha -- I see. It's been a while since I looked at the output of systeminfo. How are you storing it in your csv? Are you extracting certain parts of it and ditching others, or are you reading it all in? To answer your questions: 1. for /f will allow you to store one line at a time of program output as a variable. for example for /f "delims=*" %%F in ('type foo.csv') do set fooline=%%F; will type out foo.csv and store each line in %fooline%, which you can then operate on as you wish. (Be careful when operating on %fooline% within the for loop though -- you're going to want to use enabledelayedexpansion and refer to it as !fooline!. I have to relearn the exact syntax of this every time I use it for some reason.) I don't know how to get for /f to ignore newlines though. 2. I'm not sure if that limitation is still an issue in NT and newer systems -- and anyway the initial environment size can be changed on older Windows systems to accommodate more variables (see command /? -- I think it's the :e switch.) 3. Yep, I see your problem. Again, what kind of output are you looking for here? And what OS are you using?

Wow! I just tried your suggestion in #1 (with nested for loops), and it works! Thank you so much!

Ever consider using vbscript? I've had to do this in batch before too (when we had Novell, too bad I still don't have the DOS version it pretty much did the same as you described above). For something that may appear at first to be more complicated looking, but requires less "workarounds" try starting at http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=798632&page=1 for more info on how to use vbscript to inventory machines and create txt output. To grab IP's you'd have to do something like this snippet of an audit script I've done recently: '------ strComputer = "." Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2") Set IPConfigSet = objWMIService.ExecQuery ("Select * from Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration Where IPEnabled=TRUE") For Each IPConfig in IPConfigSet If Not IsNull(IPConfig.IPAddress) Then Dim i For i=LBound(IPConfig.IPAddress) to UBound(IPConfig.IPAddress) CurrentAddress=IpConfig.IPAddress(i) If Left(CurrentAddress, 7)="131.118" Then sqlIPAddress = CurrentAddress sqlMACAddress = IPConfig.MACAddress sqlUsername = network.UserName sqlComputerName = network.ComputerName sqlHostName = WSHProcess("LogonServer") sqlEvent = "testing" End If Next End If Next '--------

Hah nevermind, you have a solution! My suggestion is now just there for posterity. *grins*

I've found that it's often difficult to debug nested FOR loops in NT command scripts, so I generally use an idiom like for /f "usebackq delims=" %%I in ("list_of_IP_addresses.txt") do call :process %%I goto nextbit :process rem Anything you like goes here; the IP adress rem you passed in as %%I is available here as %1. rem rem If you're passing pathnames rather than IP addresses, rem you can do Clever Things to them using "%~dpnx1" etc goto :eof :nextbit rem carry on The key technique is the intra-file "call :label" syntax, with "goto :eof" marking the end of a subroutine. Using it means there's less often a need to use the enabledelayedexpansion kludge, and you get to see each individual command echoed before it's performed.