Documentation Help for SHIFT Command

[RogerB]

On the documentation page for SHIFT (TCC > Commands > Shift) I'm confused by the figures given. The first line says it allows the use of more than 512 parameters in a batch file. But just below that, under "usage" it says CMD can only handle 10 parameters and TCC supports 4096 parameters.

I suspect some limits in TCC have been changed and the help hasn't been updated to match.

 

[rconn]

The help has been updated for build 52. (But you should never be using SHIFT anyway, unless you're writing for CMD -- and then you only have 10.)

 

[RogerB]

But you should never be using SHIFT anyway

Don't worry, I never have used it, and I'm not about to start! I just spotted the documentation problem when browsing around the batch file help topics.

 

[Jay Sage]

Rex, why should one not use SHIFT, and what should one do instead? I have batch files that use it when I want to cycle through multiple command-line arguments with DO WHILE ... process %1 ... SHIFT ENDDO.

 

[rconn]

Seems kinda klunky (and slow) -- why not just loop on %n (incrementing n each time) and exit the loop when "%n" == ""?