What does %~dp0 mean, and how does it work?

Question

I find %~dp0 very useful, and I use it a lot to make my batch files more portable.

But the label itself seems very cryptic to me... What is the ~<

Answer 1

%~dp0 expands to current directory path of the running batch file.

To get clear understanding, let's create a batch file in a directory.

C:\script\test.bat

with contents:

@echo off
echo %~dp0

When you run it from command prompt, you will see this result:

C:\script\