“. was unexpected at this time” generated from batch script line 'if exist [file] (…

Question

relevant code looks like this:

cd /d %~dp0

if exist filename.txt (
    echo %date% %time% *** text... >> filename2.txt
    echo ======================         


        

Answer 1

WELL...I am posting this as a Q & A...because I solved my own problem (took me a couple of days of trial and error to narrow down and fix the problem). I am hoping this will help some poor soul too and save them a lot of heartache, and a few hair strands...

The thing that got me thinking the most was the second bullet regarding poor handling of loops inside If statements...BUT that was not the real reason but something similar...

It turns out the problem was with the use of "(' and/or ')' on the ECHO lines...

I thought this was innocuous... I use brackets in ECHO lines in lots of places, and these lines were about 10-15 lines down from where the error message was being generated, so naturally I was not thinking that this was at all the source.

BUT it turns out that the interpreter clearly does not like the use of '(' or ')' even on ECHO lines if they are used within the If statement blocks. It must still treat them as special characters in that context...it clearly does not ignore them...

Solution:

Either taking the '(' and ')' out of those 3 lines above OR simply REM those lines out solved the problem and the error message went away...all is finally well...

BTW it is possible that the a similar thing may apply to FOR statements too (I vaguely recall reading something about FOR acting strangely too).

So food for thought.