Saving current path to a var (problem with pipe)

[Chase]

I started writing Batch scripts just now, and they already prove very useful. But right now there's something I don't get. Using the | character, you use a pipe to send the output of one program to the input of another. Very un-Windows-like, at least. This works perfectly:

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echo 03-09-08 | date

the date command expects a new date in this format, and that's what i supply.
Now I want to save the current directory to a variable, but somehow this doesn't work:

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cd | set /p folder=

"set /p [VARNAME]=" prompts for a value to assign to VARNAME, and I'm giving it the output of cd. It refuses to work.
For some strange reason, this works:

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cd > tmp
set /p folder= < tmp

Thanks for any hints, I'm somewhat in the dark here

[DosItHelp]

Chase,

Interesting observation.
In your case you could simply use the environment variable cd like this:

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set folder=%cd%

To parse the output of a command into a variable you would typically use the FOR /F command.

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set "folder="
for /f "tokens=*" %%A in ('cd') do set "folder=%%A"
echo.folder is '%folder%'

However why piping '|' and file redirection '<' behave different is indeed strange...

[Chase]

Thanks for the info, and sorry for the delay - haven't been around in a while

Unrelated, but I didn't want to open a thread for it: Do you guys know of some overview of variable flags? like %~1 or %%dpn~i.. i keep seeing these, but can't find anything to look it up

[DosItHelp]

Chase,

Click here and scroll down a little bit:
http://www.dostips.com/DosCommandRef.htm#CALL

Hope this helps