Works for:

Windows XP cmd shell

Should also work for:

any cmd or command shell

I have two unix-like tools which can extend my scripting under DOS, here::

c:\test > dir
13.10.2010  08:51            39.424 date.exe
13.10.2010  08:51            57.856 ls.exe
10.11.2010  18:00               535 test.bat

What I want is to assign the standard command output from these tools to variable for further processing. Here is one way to do that:

@echo off
echo.
echo.
call :_DATE
echo [DATE]:
echo %result%
echo.

call :LS_FILE
echo [LS]:
echo %result%
echo.

goto :EOF

:_DATE
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=" %%A in ('date.exe') do SET result=%%A
GOTO :eof

:LS_FILE
FOR /F "tokens=1 delims=" %%A in ('ls.exe --full-time -l %*') do SET result=%%A
GOTO :eof

 
Have fun!