Table of Contents

About

From the set help.

The problem

The current expansion happens when a text block is read, not when it is executed.

IF

Here below, you have the example of an immediate variable expansion with an if block The following code when running: 

@echo off
set VAR=before
if "%VAR%" == "before" (
	set VAR=after
	if "%VAR%" == "after" (
		echo It worked 
	) ELSE (
		echo It didn't work
	)
)

is equivalent / expanded to : 

set VAR=before
if "before" == "before" (
   set VAR=after
   if "before" == "after" (echo It worked  )  ELSE (echo It didn't work )
)

because the substitution of the variable occurs in the whole if block.

And the above script will output: 

It didn't work

FOR

Here below, you have the example of an immediate variable expansion within a for block that try to set up a variable with all list of files (in this case: demo1.bat and demo2.bat). 

@echo on
set LIST=
for %%i in (*) do set LIST=%LIST%;%%i
echo %LIST%

is equivalent / expanded to : 

set LIST=
for %i in (*) do set LIST=;%i
set LIST=;demo1.bat
set LIST=;demo2.bat
echo ;demo2.bat

And the above script will output: 

;demo2.bat

Solution

Delayed environment variable expansion allows to use a different character (the exclamation mark) to expand environment variables at execution time.

If delayed variable expansion is enabled, the above examples If example could be written as: 

set VAR=before
if "%VAR%" == "before" (
	set VAR=after
	if "!VAR!" == "after" (
		echo It worked 
	) ELSE (
		echo It doesn't worked
	)
)

and the above script will output: 

It worked

Configuration

The support for delayed environment variable expansion is always disabled by default, but may be enabled/disabled via: