From: dr.j.r.stockton@gmail.com   
      
   On Wednesday, 12 April 2023 at 02:50:14 UTC+1, JJ wrote:   
   > On Tue, 11 Apr 2023 15:16:54 -0700 (PDT), John Stockton wrote:   
   > >   
   > > But it must be nicer to do it in pure Batch - how?   
   > Are those character code numbers in hexadecimal or in decimal?   
      
   They are decimal, but not character code.  That means from the 20th character   
   to the 29th character  (there is a "W", 2 "-", and 7 digits).   
      
      
   > > I can set an environment variable YWD to characters 20-29 of a one-line   
   > > file, ending CRLF, using an ancient utility COLS, written by me.   
      
   My COLS is a fairly simple stream editor, reading lines from Standard Input,   
   processing each in turn, and writing them to Standard Output.  Its arguments   
   include strings and position indication.   
   So I just use it to edit the input line to a SET YWD=?????????? line, redirect   
   the output to a new file, call that file, and delete it.   
      
   COLS was written in 16-bit Borland Pascal, probably version 7, last edited &   
   compiled 2005-10-29, and recompiled in Delphi 3 on 2009-02-10 to get the   
   current 32-bit EXE file.   
      
      
      
   --   
     (c) John Stockton, near London, UK.  Using Google Groups.           |   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)