Windows Batch File: usebackq, quotes within quotes

Goal: Delete empty folders at end of a mutli-step clean-up. rd without "Force" removes directories that are not empty.

This works:

for /f "usebackq" %%d in (`"dir O:\Folder~1\Folder /ad/b/s | sort /R"`) do rd "%%d"

These don't work:

for /f "usebackq" %%d in (`"dir \"O:\Folder With Spaces\Folder\" /ad/b/s | sort /R"`) do rd "%%d"
for /f "usebackq" %%d in (`"dir ""O:\Folder With Spaces\Folder"" /ad/b/s | sort /R"`) do rd "%%d"
for /f "usebackq" %%d in (`"dir ^"O:\Folder With Spaces\Folder^" /ad/b/s | sort /R"`) do rd "%%d"

I know I'm missing something simple...

EDIT
Adding the example below to the mix:

If I actually echo the %d it echos.... "O:\Patient". Not the full name.

2 Answers

You don't need the (outer) double quotes with usebackq.

You can get the list of directories from your piped commands, but when the output has spaces, only the first part will go to the %%d variable. To avoid that, use an additional tokens=* parameter (from for /?):

for /f "usebackq tokens=*" %%d in (`dir "C:\Program Files" /ad /b /s ^| sort /R`) do echo "%%d"

You need to escape the pipe character:

FOR /F "usebackq" %i IN (`dir /b ^| sort`) DO echo %i

1

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