Batch File to show a Directory List excluding Directories that Start with Underscore "_"

Question

I am throwing together a batch file that will echo out a list of all of the directories in a specific path.

I have a few folders in the W:/wamp/www/ directory that start with an underscore _; for example _templates.

I would like the result to exclude any folders that start with an _. I don’t need this effort to be recursive.

So my current directory for w:/wamp/www/ looks like this:

• _system
• _templates
• _assets
• Folder1
• Folder2
• Folder3

Desired echo output is:

• Folder1
• Folder2
• Folder3

I can get a listing with a number count using the following but of course it throws all of the folders back at me. I’d appreciate any assistance. I don’t really need the numbers in this list so if there is a more elegant approach to this I would be grateful for the insight

set acctDir=w:\wamp\www\
set app=setup.exe /cd
set log=w:\wamp\logs\projectlogs.txt


set c=0
For /f %%a in ('dir !acctDir! /B /A /D') do (
    set /a c+=1
    echo     !c!  %%a
    set dir!c!=%%a
    set projectname=%%a
)

Answer 1

You can test for the underscore somewhere inside your FOR loop.

SET FIRSTCHAR=%%a
SET FIRSTCHAR=!FIRSTCHAR:~0,1!
IF NOT "!FIRSTCHAR!"=="_" (do some stuff)

This site has some good tips on string manipulation in CMD. http://www.dostips.com/DtTipsStringManipulation.php

Answer 2

If all you need is the listing, the full code could be

dir /a /b /d "w:\wamp\www" | findstr /v /b /c:"_"

Use findstr to filter the list, and retrieve only the lines that do not contain (/v) at the beginning of the line (/b) an underscore

Answer 3

If this system is at least Windows 7/Server 2008 R2 then you can run the following command interactively in Powershell:

Get-ChildItem -Exclude _* -Path w:\wamp\www\ | where{$_.mode -like "d*"} | select name

It really is advised to scrap batch all together and move to Powershell. It is the successor of cmd (which will be deprecated in the future) and is way more capable due to it's object orientation.

The command retrieves everything in the www directory that doesn't start with '_', then only passes directories down the pipeline to the select command that returns the directories' name attribute.

Let me know if you need to automate this or if this is sufficient.