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

An example would be nice - here's a trivial one

for %I in (*.*) do @echo %~xI

it lists only the EXTENSIONS of each file in current folder

for more useful variable combinations (also listed in previous response) from the CMD prompt execute: HELP FOR which contains this snippet

The modifiers can be combined to get compound results:

%~dpI       - expands %I to a drive letter and path only
%~nxI       - expands %I to a file name and extension only
%~fsI       - expands %I to a full path name with short names only
%~dp$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH
               environment variable for %I and expands to the
               drive letter and path of the first one found.
%~ftzaI     - expands %I to a DIR like output line