So for the second part of my current dilemma, I have a list of folders in "c:\file_list.txt". I need to be able to extract them (well, echo them with some mods) based on the line number because this batch script is being called by an iterative macro process. I'm passing the line number as a parameter.

@echo off setlocal enabledelayedexpansion set /a counter=0 set /a %%a = "" for /f "usebackq delims=" %%a in (c:\file_list.txt) do (if "!counter!"=="%1" goto :printme & set /a counter+=1) :printme echo %%a

which gives me an output of "%a". Doh! So, I've tried echoing !a! (result: "ECHO is off."); I've tried echoing %a (result: a)

I figured the easy thing to do would be to modify the "head.bat" code found here:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/130116/dos-batch-commands-to-read-first-line-from-text-file except rather than echoing every line - I'd just echo the last line found. Not as simple as one might think. I've noticed that my counter is staying at zero for some reason; I'm wondering if the "set /a counter+=1" is doing what I think it's doing.