MS DOS Command: SHIFT

Reference from Microsoft MS-DOS cmd help

Description

Changes the position of replaceable parameters in a batch program.

Syntax

Remarks

How the SHIFT command works

The SHIFT command changes the values of the replaceable parameters %0 through %9 by copying each parameter into the previous one. In other words, the value of %1 is copied to %0, the value of %2 is copied to %1, and so on. This is useful for writing a batch file that performs the same operation on any number of parameters.

Working with more than 10 command-line parameters

You can also use the SHIFT command to create a batch file that can accept more than 10 parameters. If you specify more than 10 parameters on the command line, those that appear after the tenth (%9) will be shifted one at a time into %9.

Shifting parameters back

There is no backward SHIFT command. Once you carry out the SHIFT command, you cannot recover the first parameter (%0) that existed before the shift.

Examples

The following batch file, MYCOPY.BAT, shows how to use the SHIFT command with any number of parameters. It copies a list of files to a specific directory. The parameters are the directory name followed by any number of filenames.

• @echo off
• rem MYCOPY.BAT copies any number of files
• rem to a directory.
• rem The command uses the following syntax:
• rem mycopy dir file1 file2 ...
• set todir=%1
• :getfile
• shift
• if "%1"=="" goto end
• copy %1 %todir%
• goto getfile
• :end
• set todir=
• echo All done