Where is this (%date:~4%) documented in Microsoft documentation?

  • Thread starter Thread starter rprgrmr
  • Start date Start date
Hear hear. In the context of this newsgroup, most of us know what you are
talking about when searching for "for /f". In the general populace, however,
most would say "What are you talking about?". I'm not sure how the OP
expects a search engine to be pre-disposed to what he is thinking about.

There is also an "IF" command, similar to the "IF" statements of many
programming languages. A google search gets over 3.5 billion hits. It seems
that "IF" has meaning in other contexts.

Google is not a documentation index, it is a general purpose search tool
that can be surprisingly effective when one knows how to properly refine
one's search.

/Al

Tim Meddick said:
I typed into the Google search page, the following :


"FOR command" microsoft


....and hit "Google Search". The FIRST link at the top was this :

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/for.mspx

If you need more information than this page provides on the FOR command,
then I would try posting your exact query here!!...

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




Petr Laznovsky said:
Tim said:
Petr,
if you have an *exact* [string] match you want to search google
for - enclose it inside double quotation marks, thus :

"FOR /F"

...and then hit the search button!!

This works for unusual characters that would normally be ignored, and
for groups of words where you want a match to the exact same sequence of
words - just enclose in "quotes".
Click to expand...

Unfortunatelly this does not help. I am tried it many times. When I try
to search _for /f_ than I got 624 000 000 pages, when I try to search
_"for/f"_ than I got 6 200 000 which is smaller number, but still too
big to get ONLY pages realted to batch programming. Try it, only the
first four pages are batch related, following unrelated crap...

check this:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Q: Google ignores some punctuation and special characters, including ! ?
, . ; [ ] @ / # < > .

A: Because punctuation is typically not as important as the text around
it, Google ignores most punctuation in your search terms.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
foxidrive said:
That's another "Gotcha" for batch files. if the file echo.txt exists then
it will start up Notepad or whatever.


From memory, none of the echo delimiters were without problems but echo\
is
more visible than echo.
Click to expand...

I use "/" because it looks less like a path. This command:

echo\bye\bye.txt

will open a text file in noteapd with that relative path if it exists,
otherwise it will display the string "bye\bye.txt", whereas:

echo/bye\bye.txt

will display "bye\bye.txt" whether or not such a file happens to exist.

/Al
 
I use "/" because it looks less like a path. This command:

echo\bye\bye.txt

will open a text file in noteapd with that relative path if it exists,
otherwise it will display the string "bye\bye.txt", whereas:

echo/bye\bye.txt

will display "bye\bye.txt" whether or not such a file happens to exist.
Click to expand...


That's a good point Al.
 
Indeed! - All I was trying to impart to "Petr Laznovsky" (who added his own query
to the OP's), was that to enclose one or more search terms inside double-quotes, will
effect an *exact* string match on everything inside the quotation marks with Google!

Quite often it makes no difference, I will admit.

This is because Google's engine is getting smarter, and the results are become more
"predictive", as the years go by, whereas once it made all the difference in the
world.

But, it is still useful to know as now and again there's an ambiguity with your
search terms that Google has a problem with and you get results, you are surprised to
find, bear no connection to what you typed in.

On these occasions, enclosing a few well chosen words within quotes can and does
solve the problem without having to resort to Google's "Advanced Search" link!

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
 
Guys,

I am use google since this site start. (Altavista years before google
starts). I am beginner only in the batch scritpts, not in the google
searching.

I made little test:

1. query: FOR /F - 682,000,000 results
2. query: FOR F - 682,000,000 results
3. query: "FOR /F" - 6,170,000 results
4. query: "FOR F" - 6,170,000 results

Look at the search 1,2 and 3,4 both give EXACT same number of results.
This is (by my opinion) PROOF so google ignore character "/" from its
searches. Does not matter if I use standard or advanced search form or
if I put the searched string between the doublequotes.

Also google itself document this fact on their web site, I post it last
time.

If your google give you different results with this test, than I am
afraid somebody redirect your google.com domain to some other search
engine ;-) Be paranoid, watch out...

with best P.L.
 
Even your own data, that you quoted, verifies that using the "double quotes" *does*
make a difference!!

Just because there seem to be less results for those where the double-quotes were
used, is not important - it is whether those results were more accurate or not!

Notwithstanding, you say that it does not make a difference if you use the "quotes"
or not, and the data you reproduced says it does!

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
 
Tim said:
Even your own data, that you quoted, verifies that using the "double
quotes" *does* make a difference!!

Just because there seem to be less results for those where the
double-quotes were used, is not important - it is whether those results
were more accurate or not!

Notwithstanding, you say that it does not make a difference if you use
the "quotes" or not, and the data you reproduced says it does!
Click to expand...

You are right, wrong description of my test. Doublequotes DOES make
difference, "/" not....

P.L.
 
Petr Laznovsky said:
You are right, wrong description of my test. Doublequotes DOES make
difference, "/" not....
Click to expand...

But to quote Tim again, the number of hits is meaningless as a way to
evaluate a search engine, as it is the significance of the results, and
whether or not the results are sorted effectively.

Same thing when it comes to rating a search engine by using a poorly formed
search string. I got billions of hits for "IF", but neither you nor the
search engine can tell from such a search string what it was I was actually
looking for.

/Al
 
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