Parse tab delimited text file

Question

I need to parse a tab-delimited text file by grabbing specific columns, like columns 1 and 5, and output each of these columns into a text file. Please find an example of the data file, and the code:

Data file:

COL1 COL2 COL3 COL4 COL5 COL6
123  345  678  890  012  234
234  456  787  901  123  345
etc

Batch file:

@echo off & setlocal 
For /F "tokens=1,5*" %%i in (myFile.dat) do call :doSomething "%%i" "%%j"
goto :eof 

:doSomething 
Set VAR1=%1
Set VAR2=%2
@echo %VAR1%>>Entity.txt
@echo %VAR2%>>Account.txt

This works, however, the For loop stops on the first line.

Could you help me in finding the issue?

Answer 1

Your code works fine for me, but maybe try this shortened version?

@echo off
for /F "tokens=1,5*" %%i in (myFile.dat) do (
echo %%i >>Entity.txt
echo %%j >>Account.txt
)

Answer 2

While I would recommend using the shortened version by Bali C, the reason the code above might be stopping after the first line is because the goto :eof or exit command is not at the end of the :doSomething function.

@echo off & setlocal 
For /F "tokens=1,5*" %%i in (myFile.dat) do call :doSomething "%%i" "%%j"
goto :eof 

:doSomething 
Set VAR1=%1
Set VAR2=%2
@echo %VAR1%>>Entity.txt
@echo %VAR2%>>Account.txt
goto :eof

Or if Extensions are disabled, it would be outputting the following error message:

/F was unexpected at this time.

To resolve this add EnableExtensions to your setlocal command.

@echo off & setlocal EnableExtensions

Answer 3

your code is working fine, check the output below.

Account.txt

"COL5"

"012"

"123"

""

Entity.txt

"COL1"

"123"

"234"

"etc"