How to use spaces in “if”?

Question

I\'m trying to see if a string is the same as another string by using if, but the string contains spaces!

It looks something like this:

if %DriveDir%         


        

Answer 1

batch file interpretation is very literal. you are not really using variables, they all get replaced with their values on load. so the line

if %DriveDir%=="NOT BOOT FILES" echo Working

gets expanded to

if NOT BOOT FILES=="NOT BOOT FILES" echo Working

which is obviously syntactically incorrect. you need to have the same expression on both sides, and the NOT gets parsed as IF NOT… , so you need to surround both wih quotes.

Answer 2

You should also add quotes to variables.

if "%DriveDir%"=="NOT BOOT FILES" echo Working