String operations in a CMD/batch file

Pardon the OT question; if there's a better place to ask, please direct me.

So here's my problem .. I have this CMD shell script (not VBScript or
PowerShell), and what I need to do is some string manipulation.
Specifically:

I need to strip off the leading 2 characters from a string, and then I need
to locate the position of a special character in the string. So I have this
value:

\\servername\users\username

What I want to do is to isolate "servername".

Rewriting the script as VBSript or PowerShell isn't really an option yet, as
I am not proficient enough in those to do this.

So what I need to do is parse the string, and return everything from
position 3 to the location of the first "\". I can then use that value
later in an IF statement,

I have this:

_Server="ThatServer"

SET _Offset=3
SET _Chars=11
FOR /F "DELIMS=, SKIP=1 TOKENS=1-6" %%A IN (HomeFolders.txt) DO (

SET _HomeFolder=%%E

IF /I "!_HomeFolder:~%_Offset%,%_Chars%!" NEQ "!_Server!" (

I then do stuff here. This works, but only because the IF statement is
comparing "servername\users\username" to "ThatServer", and of course
failing. Ideally, what I want is just the servername. (I get these values by
extracting them from my Win2000 AD, using the ADFIND program, and
redirecting output to a file. I then read that file back in.

So any clues, pointers, semi-vitrolic abuse appreciated. Better ways, other
utilities, other examples, etc.

"Michael Leone" <> wrote in message
news:...
> Pardon the OT question; if there's a better place to ask, please direct
> me.
>
> So here's my problem .. I have this CMD shell script (not VBScript or
> PowerShell), and what I need to do is some string manipulation.
> Specifically:
>
> I need to strip off the leading 2 characters from a string, and then I
> need to locate the position of a special character in the string. So I
> have this value:
>
> \\servername\users\username
>
> What I want to do is to isolate "servername".
>
> Rewriting the script as VBSript or PowerShell isn't really an option yet,
> as I am not proficient enough in those to do this.
>
> So what I need to do is parse the string, and return everything from
> position 3 to the location of the first "\". I can then use that value
> later in an IF statement,
>
> I have this:
>
> _Server="ThatServer"
>
> SET _Offset=3
> SET _Chars=11
> FOR /F "DELIMS=, SKIP=1 TOKENS=1-6" %%A IN (HomeFolders.txt) DO (
>
> SET _HomeFolder=%%E
>
> IF /I "!_HomeFolder:~%_Offset%,%_Chars%!" NEQ "!_Server!" (
>
> I then do stuff here. This works, but only because the IF statement is
> comparing "servername\users\username" to "ThatServer", and of course
> failing. Ideally, what I want is just the servername. (I get these values
> by extracting them from my Win2000 AD, using the ADFIND program, and
> redirecting output to a file. I then read that file back in.
>
> So any clues, pointers, semi-vitrolic abuse appreciated. Better ways,
> other utilities, other examples, etc.

In your case you don't need string manipulation in order to extract
"ServerName" from "\\servername\users\username". This two-line batch file
will do it by using a parsing technique:
@echo off
for /F "tokens=1 delims=\" %%a in ('echo \\servername\users\username') do
set server=%%a