How to test if a file is a directory in a batch script

Question

Is there any way to find out if a file is a directory   I have the file name in a variable  In Perl I can do this   if -d  var    print  it s a directory n

User · Answer

A very simple way is to check if the child exists.

If a child does not have any child, the exist command will return false.

IF EXIST %1\. (
  echo %1 is a folder
) else (
  echo %1 is a file
)

You may have some false negative if you don't have sufficient access right (I have not tested it).

User · Answer

A variation of  batchman61 s approach  checking the Directory attribute    This time I use an external  find  command    Oh  and note the  amp  amp  trick  This is to avoid the long boring IF ERRORLEVEL syntax     ECHO OFF SETLOCAL EnableExtensions ECHO   a1   find  d   gt NUL 2 gt NUL  amp  amp        ECHO  1 is a directory     Outputs yes on    Directories  Directory symbolic links or junctions  Broken directory symbolic links or junctions   Doesn t try to resolve links   Directories which you have no read permission on  e g   C  System Volume Information

User · Answer

Here s my solution   REM make sure ERRORLEVEL is 0 TYPE NUL  REM try to PUSHD into the path  store current dir and switch to another one  PUSHD  insert path here      gt NUL 2 gt  amp 1  REM if ERRORLEVEL is still 0  it s most definitely a directory IF  ERRORLEVEL  EQU 0 command     REM if needed wanted  go back to previous directory POPD

User · Answer

Under Windows 7 and XP  I can t get it to tell files vs  dirs on mapped drives   The following script     echo off if exist c  temp data csv echo data csv is a file if exist c  temp data csv  echo data csv is a directory if exist c  temp data csv nul echo data csv is a directory if exist k  temp nonexistent txt echo nonexistent txt is a file if exist k  temp something txt echo something txt is a file if exist k  temp something txt  echo something txt is a directory if exist k  temp something txt nul echo something txt is a directory   produces    data csv is a file something txt is a file something txt is a directory something txt is a directory   So beware if your script might be fed a mapped or UNC path   The pushd solution below seems to be the most foolproof

User · Answer

This works perfectly  if exist    1   echo Directory   we need to use   1 to remove quotes from  1  and add a backslash at end  Then put thw whole into qutes again

User · Answer

I would like to post my own function script about this subject hope to be useful for someone one day    pushd   dp1  if not exist    nx1            popd         exit  b 0   else           if exist    nx1                      popd                 exit  b 1           else                   popd                 exit  b 3               This batch script checks if file folder is exist and if it is a file or a folder   Usage   script bat  PATH   Exit code s    0  file folder doesn t exist   1  exists  and it is a folder   3  exists  and it is a file

User · Answer

This works and also handles paths with spaces in them   dir   DIR    gt  NUL 2 gt  amp 1  if not errorlevel 1       echo Directory exists    else       echo Directory does not exist      Probably not the most efficient but easier to read than the other solutions in my opinion

User · Answer

Based on this article titled  How can a batch file test existence of a directory  it s  not entirely reliable    BUT I just tested this    echo off IF EXIST  1 NUL goto print ECHO not dir pause exit  print ECHO It s a directory pause   and it seems to work

User · Answer

Can t we just test with this     IF    x1        ECHO Directory   It seems to work for me

User · Answer

Here s a script that uses FOR to build a fully qualified path  and then pushd to test whether the path is a directory   Notice how it works for paths with spaces  as well as network paths    echo off if   1      goto usage  for  f  delims     i in     1   do set MYPATH     fi  pushd  MYPATH  2 gt nul if errorlevel 1 goto notdir goto isdir   notdir echo not a directory goto exit   isdir popd echo is a directory goto exit   usage echo Usage    0 DIRECTORY TO TEST   exit   Sample output with the above saved as  isdir bat    C   gt isdir c  Windows system32 is a directory  C   gt isdir c  Windows system32 wow32 dll not a directory  C   gt isdir c  notadir not a directory  C   gt isdir  C  Documents and Settings  is a directory  C   gt isdir   is a directory  C   gt isdir   ninja SharedDocs cpu-z is a directory  C   gt isdir   ninja SharedDocs cpu-z cpuz ini not a directory

User · Answer

Further to my previous offering  I find this also works   if exist  1  echo Directory   No quotes around  1 are needed because the caller will supply them  This saves one entire keystroke over my answer of a year ago  -

User · Answer

This works   if exist  1   echo Directory   Works with directory names that contains spaces   C   gt if exist  c  Program Files    echo Directory Directory   Note that the quotes are necessary if the directory contains spaces   C   gt if exist c  Program Files   echo Directory   Can also be expressed as   C   gt SET D  C  Program Files  C   gt if exist  D    echo Directory Directory   This is safe to try at home  kids

User · Answer

Here is my solution after many tests with if exist  pushd  dir  AD  etc      echo off cd  d C   for  f  delims     I in   dir  a  ogn  b   do       call  isdir    I      if errorlevel 1  echo F     fI  else echo D     fI   cmd k   isdir echo   a1   findstr  b  d   gt nul exit  b  errorlevel      Errorlevel    0   folder    1   file or item not found    It works with files that have no extension It works with folders named folder ext It works with UNC path It works with double-quoted full path or with just the dirname or filename only  It works even if you don t have read permissions It works with Directory Links  Junctions   It works with files whose path contains a Directory Link

User · Answer

One issue with using    si NUL method is that there is the chance that it guesses wrong  Its possible to have a filename shorten to the wrong file  I don t think    si resolves the 8 3 filename  but guesses it  but using string manipulation to shorten the filepath  I believe if you have similar file paths it may not work   An alternative method   dir  AD  F  2 gt  amp 1   findstr  C  Not Found  gt NUL  amp  amp  goto IsFile    goto IsDir    IsFile   echo  F  is a file   goto done   IsDir   echo  F  is a directory   goto done   done   You can replace  goto IsFile    goto IsDir  with other batch commands   echo Is a File    echo is a Directory

User · Answer

This is the code that I use in my BATCH files       echo off set param   1 set tempfile   temp   txt dir  b ad  gt   tempfile  set isfolder false for  f  delims     i in  temp txt  do if  i     i     param   set isfolder true del  tempfile  echo  isfolder  if  isfolder   true echo  param  is a directory

User · Answer

I use this   if not   1            pushd   dpn1 2 gt  nul   if errorlevel    1 pushd   dp1

User · Answer

CD returns an EXIT FAILURE when the specified directory does not exist  And you got conditional processing symbols  so you could do like the below for this   SET cd backup  cd   CD    1   amp  amp  CD  cd backup      GOTO Error   Error CD  cd backup

User · Answer

Recently failed with different approaches from the above  Quite sure they worked in the past  maybe related to dfs here  Now using the files attributes and cut first char   echo off SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS set ATTR   a1 set DIRATTR  ATTR  0 1  if  I   DIRATTR     d  echo  1 is a folder  EOF

User · Answer

If you can cd into it  it s a directory   set cwd  cd   cd  D   1  2 gt  nul  IF  errorlevel   0 GOTO end  cd  D    dp1   echo This is a file    goto end2  end  echo This is a directory  end2   REM restore prior directory  cd  cwd

User · Answer

If your objective is to only process directories then this will be useful   This is taken from the https   ss64 com nt for d html     Example    List every subfolder  below the folder C  Work  that has a name starting with  User    CD  Work FOR  D  r   G in   User    DO Echo We found    FOR  D or FOR  D  R   echo off cd  d  C  your directory here  for  d  r   A in       do echo We found a folder     nxA pause   Remove  r to only go one folder deep  The  r switch is recursive and undocumented in the command below   The for  d help taken from command for        FOR  D  variable IN  set  DO command  command-parameters       If set contains wildcards  then specifies to match against directory       names instead of file names

User · Answer

You can do it like so   IF EXIST  VAR  NUL ECHO It s a directory   However  this only works for directories without spaces in their names   When you add quotes round the variable to handle the spaces it will stop working   To handle directories with spaces  convert the filename to short 8 3 format as follows   FOR   i IN   VAR   DO IF EXIST    si NUL ECHO It s a directory   The    si converts   i to an 8 3 filename   To see all the other tricks you can perform with FOR variables enter HELP FOR at a command prompt    Note - the example given above is in the format to work in a batch file  To get it work on the command line  replace the    with   in both places

User · Answer

The NUL technique seems to only work on 8 3 compliant file names    In other words   D  Documents and Settings  is  bad  and  D  DOCUME 1  is  good      I think there is some difficulty using the  NUL  tecnique when there are SPACES in the directory name  such as  Documents and Settings    I am using Windows XP service pack 2 and launching the cmd prompt from  SystemRoot  system32 cmd exe  Here are some examples of what DID NOT work and what DOES WORK for me    These are all demonstrations done  live  at an interactive prompt   I figure that you should get things to work there before trying to debug them in a script    This DID NOT work   D  Documents and Settings gt if exist  D  Documents and Settings NUL  echo yes  This DID NOT work   D  Documents and Settings gt if exist D  Documents and Settings NUL echo yes  This DOES work  for me    D  Documents and Settings gt cd     D   gt REM get the short 8 3 name for the file  D   gt dir  x  Volume in drive D has no label  Volume Serial Number is 34BE-F9C9  Directory of D    09 25 2008  05 09 PM     lt DIR gt                        2008 09 25 2008  05 14 PM     lt DIR gt           200809 1 25  2008 09 25 09 23 2008  03 44 PM     lt DIR gt           BOOST  3     boost repo working copy 09 02 2008  02 13 PM           486 128 CHROME 1 EXE ChromeSetup exe 02 14 2008  12 32 PM     lt DIR gt                        cygwin    Look right here         09 25 2008  08 34 AM     lt DIR gt           DOCUME 1     Documents and Settings  09 11 2008  01 57 PM                 0 EMPTY  1 TXT empty testcopy file txt 01 21 2008  06 58 PM     lt DIR gt           NATION 1     National Instruments Downloads 10 12 2007  11 25 AM     lt DIR gt                        NVIDIA 05 13 2008  09 42 AM     lt DIR gt                        Office10 09 19 2008  11 08 AM     lt DIR gt           PROGRA 1     Program Files 12 02 1999  02 54 PM            24 576              setx exe 09 15 2008  11 19 AM     lt DIR gt                        TEMP 02 14 2008  12 26 PM     lt DIR gt                        tmp 01 21 2008  07 05 PM     lt DIR gt                        VXIPNP 09 23 2008  12 15 PM     lt DIR gt                        WINDOWS 02 21 2008  03 49 PM     lt DIR gt                        wx28 02 29 2008  01 47 PM     lt DIR gt           WXWIDG 2     wxWidgets 3 File s         510 704 bytes 20 Dir s   238 250 901 504 bytes free  D   gt REM now use the  NUL test with the 8 3 name  D   gt if exist d  docume 1 NUL echo yes  yes  This works  but it s sort of silly  because the dot already implies i am in a directory   D  Documents and Settings gt if exist   NUL echo yes

[windows] How to test if a file is a directory in a batch script?

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