How do you loop through each line in a text file using a windows batch file?

I needed to process the entire line as a whole. Here is what I found to work.

for /F "tokens=*" %%A in (myfile.txt) do [process] %%A

The tokens keyword with an asterisk (*) will pull all text for the entire line. If you don't put in the asterisk it will only pull the first word on the line. I assume it has to do with spaces.

For Command on TechNet

If there are spaces in your file path, you need to use usebackq. For example.

for /F "usebackq tokens=*" %%A in ("my file.txt") do [process] %%A

From the Windows command line reference:

To parse a file, ignoring commented lines, type:

for /F "eol=; tokens=2,3* delims=," %i in (myfile.txt) do @echo %i %j %k

This command parses each line in Myfile.txt, ignoring lines that begin with a semicolon and passing the second and third token from each line to the FOR body (tokens are delimited by commas or spaces). The body of the FOR statement references %i to get the second token, %j to get the third token, and %k to get all of the remaining tokens.

If the file names that you supply contain spaces, use quotation marks around the text (for example, "File Name"). To use quotation marks, you must use usebackq. Otherwise, the quotation marks are interpreted as defining a literal string to parse.

By the way, you can find the command-line help file on most Windows systems at:

 "C:\WINDOWS\Help\ntcmds.chm"

Or, you may exclude the options in quotes:

FOR /F %%i IN (myfile.txt) DO ECHO %%i

Here's a bat file I wrote to execute all SQL scripts in a folder:

REM ******************************************************************
REM Runs all *.sql scripts sorted by filename in the current folder.
REM To use integrated auth change -U <user> -P <password> to -E
REM ******************************************************************

dir /B /O:n *.sql > RunSqlScripts.tmp
for /F %%A in (RunSqlScripts.tmp) do osql -S (local) -d DEFAULT_DATABASE_NAME -U USERNAME_GOES_HERE -P PASSWORD_GOES_HERE -i %%A
del RunSqlScripts.tmp

If you have an NT-family Windows (one with cmd.exe as the shell), try the FOR /F command.

The accepted anwser using cmd.exe and

for /F "tokens=*" %F in (file.txt) do whatever "%F" ...

works only for "normal" files. It fails miserably with huge files.

For big files, you may need to use Powershell and something like this:

[IO.File]::ReadLines("file.txt") | ForEach-Object { whatever "$_" }

or if you have enough memory:

foreach($line in [System.IO.File]::ReadLines("file.txt")) { whatever "$line" } 

This worked for me with a 250 MB file containing over 2 million lines, where the for /F ... command got stuck after a few thousand lines.

For the differences between foreach and ForEach-Object, see Getting to Know ForEach and ForEach-Object.

(credits: Read file line by line in PowerShell )

To print all lines in text file from command line (with delayedExpansion):

set input="path/to/file.txt"

for /f "tokens=* delims=[" %i in ('type "%input%" ^| find /v /n ""') do (
set a=%i
set a=!a:*]=]!
echo:!a:~1!)

Works with leading whitespace, blank lines, whitespace lines.

Tested on Win 10 CMD