Batch script with for loop and pipe

Question

I would like all the csv files in a directory which filename does not contain word "summary". Inside the command prompt I can type the following command

dir /b my_dir\*.csv | find /V "summary"

When I try to transfer the above command into a batch file I run into a problem in that the pipe command is not supported in the for loop. That is I cannot do the following

FOR /f %%A in ('dir /b my_dir\*.csv | find /V "summary"') do (
rem want to do something here
)

Can somebody shed some light to me on how to solve the problem above?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You need to escape the | character to prevent its being interpreted at the time of parsing the loop command. Use ^ to escape it:

FOR /f "delims=" %%A in ('dir /b "my_dir\*.csv" ^| find /V "summary"') do (
rem do what you want with %%A here
)

Once escaped, the | becomes part of the '-delimited string. It is only interpreted as a special symbol when that string is parsed separately from the loop, as a "sub-command", according to the syntax. And that is done after parsing the loop.