I know how to do this when the variable is pre-defined. However, when asking for the user to enter in some kind of input, how do I trim leading and trailing whitespace? This is what I have so far: @echo off set /p input=: echo. The input is %input% before ::trim left whitespace for /f "tokens=* delims= " %%a in ("%input%") do set input=%%a ::trim right whitespace (up to 100 spaces at the end) for /l %%a in (1,1,100) do if "!input:~-1!"==" " set input=!input:~0,-1! echo. The input is %input% after pause Thank you! :)