# Missing characters when creating .bat file in Julia
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252
**Category:** New to Julia
**Tags:** question
**Created:** [October 25, 2022, 3:28pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252 "2022-10-25T15:28:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Funkerfish](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Funkerfish)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 3:28pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/1 "2022-10-25T15:28:56Z")
Hi everyone!
I have a problem with the file system.
I want to create a .bat file in order to delete all the .png files in the folder.
the .bat file should be:
```julia
@echo off
Del %cd%\\*.png
echo delete complete！
pause
```
while the julia create a .bat file with a missing character “/”
```julia
@echo off
Del %cd%\*.png
echo delete complete!
pause
```
my code is,
```julia
function delete_bat()
io = open("delete_png.bat","w")
write(io,"@echo off
Del %cd%\\*.png
echo delete complete!
pause
")
close(io)
end
delete_bat()
```
Could you please help me?
---
### Author:  [@nilshg](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/nilshg)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 3:57pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/2 "2022-10-25T15:57:10Z")
Backspaces need to be escaped:
```julia
julia> println("@echo off
Del %cd%\\*.png
echo delete complete!
pause
")
@echo off
Del %cd%\*.png
echo delete complete!
pause
julia> println("@echo off
Del %cd%\\\\*.png
echo delete complete!
pause
")
@echo off
Del %cd%\\*.png
echo delete complete!
pause
```
---
### Author:  [@stillyslalom](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stillyslalom)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 3:58pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/3 "2022-10-25T15:58:47Z")
Backslash (`\`) is the ‘escape character’ used to skip control sequences encountered in strings. In this case, you’re escaping another backslash, so you can either use four consecutive backslashes (`\\\\`) as mentioned above, or a `raw` string that ignores control sequences and escapes (`raw"%cd%\\.png`").
---
### Author:  [@PeterSimon](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/PeterSimon)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 4:28pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/4 "2022-10-25T16:28:36Z")
Instead of a batch file, you could do it directly from Julia. This would have the advantage that it would also work on Linux or a Mac:
```julia
using Glob
function delete_files(;ext="png", directory=pwd())
ndeleted = 0
cd(directory) do
files = glob("*." * ext)
foreach(rm, files)
ndeleted = length(files)
println(ndeleted, " .", ext, " files deleted from ", directory)
end
return ndeleted
end
```
---
### Author:  [@digital\_carver](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/digital_carver)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 5:56pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/5 "2022-10-25T17:56:15Z")
If you just want the string to be written out directly to the file, and don’t need special escape sequences (`\n`, `\t`, etc.) or Julia variables inside the string, then you can just add `raw` at the beginning of the string:
```julia
function delete_bat()
io = open("delete_png.bat","w")
write(io, raw"@echo off
Del %cd%\\*.png
echo delete complete!
pause
")
close(io)
end
delete_bat()
```
Within `raw` strings, Julia does no special interpretation; what you see is what you get.
---
### Author:  [@Funkerfish](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Funkerfish)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 8:26pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/6 "2022-10-25T20:26:47Z")
Really thank you guys! my problem solved.
but why it would be `//` when `println("//")`? Is there anything special?
---
### Author:  [@GunnarFarneback](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/GunnarFarneback)
#### Post date: [October 25, 2022, 8:45pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/7 "2022-10-25T20:45:36Z")
Roughly it goes like this. A string is something that starts and ends with quotation marks. Now suppose you want to have a string which contains quotation marks, say `""""`, would that be one string containing two quotation marks or two empty strings? There are some possible ways to resolve this but a common approach is to introduce an “escape” character, commonly backslash, meaning that a quotation mark following the escape character is a quotation mark within the string and not a string delimiter. Thus a string containing two quotation marks is encoded as `"\"\""`. But how would you now write a string containing a backslash? If you try `"\"` the second quotation mark is an escaped quotation mark and not the end of the string. The solution is to let the escape character escape itself, so `"\\"` means a string containing a single backslash. Then when we have an escape convention it’s natural to introduce more escape codes for useful things, like `"\n"` meaning a newline.
---
### Author:  [@sylvaticus](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sylvaticus)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2022, 5:10am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/8 "2022-10-26T05:10:10Z")
Because in Julia the escape character is `\` and not `/` 🙂
---
### Author:  [@Funkerfish](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Funkerfish)
#### Post date: [October 26, 2022, 5:18am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/missing-characters-when-creating-bat-file-in-julia/89252/9 "2022-10-26T05:18:03Z")
my mistake 😅… thanks