Now take the case of a WinCE device not providing delayed expansion and not providing FOR either (welcome to hell)

only %0 is mainly available here.

The only solution I could see is the following:
- get the %0
- MKDIR a folder with some added characters to your batch filename (nasty)
- CD  NEWDIR..
- RMDIR NEWDIR

This is awfull but provides a solution, no need to say it’s not even reliable if you are on a ReadOnly partition (pretty rare within this context imho).

any comments on this?

Problem: use xcopy without File/Directory prompt

e.g. entry is “dirfile.txt”, discard filename to get “dir”

Solution:

given 

source_dir = “d:source”

and

target_dir = “c:tmpsource”

script below
—————-
set some_file_entry=dirfile.txt
set dst_file=%target_dir%%some_file_entry%

for %%f in (%dst_file%) do (
    xcopy %source_dir%%some_file_entry% %%~df%%~pf
)
————————
will copy:

“d:sourcedirfile.txt” -> “c:tmpsourcedirfile.txt”

without “(F = file, D = directory)? ” bullsh*t!!!

This page is still coming up in searches so, I’ll just add that if you want just the current folder, you’ll have to extract it from the path yourself:
(you’ll need delayed expansion enabled for this)

call :getCurrentFolder “%~1″ strPath

…

:getCurrentFolder
setlocal
set ret=%~1
if “!ret!” equ “” (
set ret=
) else if “!ret:~-1!” equ “\” (
set ret=
) else (
call :getCurrentFolder “!ret:~0,-1!” folder
set ret=!folder!!ret:~-1!
)
endlocal&set %2=%ret%

%~I – expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (“)
%~fI – expands %I to a fully qualified path name
%~dI – expands %I to a drive letter only
%~pI – expands %I to a path only
%~nI – expands %I to a file name only
%~xI – expands %I to a file extension only
%~sI – expanded path contains short names only
%~aI – expands %I to file attributes of file
%~tI – expands %I to date/time of file
%~zI – expands %I to size of file
%~$PATH:I – searches the directories listed in the PATH
environment variable and expands %I to the
fully qualified name of the first one found.
If the environment variable name is not
defined or the file is not found by the
search, then this modifier expands to the
empty string

The modifiers can be combined to get compound results:

%~dpI – expands %I to a drive letter and path only
%~nxI – expands %I to a file name and extension only
%~fsI – expands %I to a full path name with short names only
%~dp$PATH:I – searches the directories listed in the PATH
environment variable for %I and expands to the
drive letter and path of the first one found.
%~ftzaI – expands %I to a DIR like output line

In the above examples %I and PATH can be replaced by other valid
values. The %~ syntax is terminated by a valid FOR variable name.
Picking upper case variable names like %I makes it more readable and
avoids confusion with the modifiers, which are not case sensitive.