Jasen!
 
=>I found  2 ways to use fewer lines and fewer variables.
 
Only 2? :) Least I got you thinkin' batch. A friend suggested that the
parms within the For/Do loops (0 1 2 3 4...) could be SET to an Env. Var.
and thus replaced by %var%, which is true BUT sometimes the originating
programmer insists on doing it HIS way!
 
BTW, I knock up this alternate method to achieve the `incremental rename'
operation `cause the other batch I have uses the old For/Do forward slash
trick to progressively strip off the leading char. from the string in the
For/Do loop. That `trick' unfortunately doesn't work with Dos 7 (32 bit
Windows).
 
Do you know what the story is with XP and dos errorlevels? I get the
impression that errorlevels don't work (the same?) under XP as previosly.
Bruce

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