Shift

Changes the position of batch parameters in a batch file.

Syntax

shift

Parameters

none

Remarks

• Using the shift command-line option with command extensions

  When command extensions are enabled (that is, the default), the shift command supports the /n command-line option, which tells the command to start shifting at the nth argument, where n can be a value from zero to eight. For example,

  SHIFT /2

  would shift %3 to %2, %4 to %3, and so on, and leave %0 and %1 unaffected.

• How the shift command works

  The shift command changes the values of the batch 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 batch parameters

  You can also use the shift command to create a batch file that can accept more than 10 batch 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.

• Using %* with shift 

  Shift has no affect on the %* batch parameter.

• Shifting parameters back

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

Examples

The following batch file, Mycopy.bat, shows how to use shift with any number of batch parameters. It copies a list of files to a specific directory. The batch parameters are represented by the directory and file name arguments.

@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

Formatting legend

Cmd

Using batch parameters

Command-line reference A-Z