Pass, escape and recognize Special Character in Windows Batch File

Question

I wrote a script which goes through each character of an input string and depending on the character I need to do different things. This works quite well as long as my input doe

Answer 1

@echo off
    setlocal enableextensions disabledelayedexpansion

    rem Value to test
    set "myText=1 <> () & !"" "

:loop    
    rem Quote it to avoid problems with special characters.
    rem Closing quote is not included in value
    SET "char=%mytext:~0,1%"

    rem Test if we have something to test
    if not defined char goto :done

    rem Test first problematic characters that need escape
    if ^%char%==^" echo quote           & goto :next
    if ^%char%==^& echo ampersand       & goto :next
    if ^%char%==^> echo greater than    & goto :next
    if ^%char%==^< echo lower than      & goto :next
    if ^%char%==^^ echo caret           & goto :next
    if ^%char%==^( echo open bracket    & goto :next
    if ^%char%==^) echo close bracket   & goto :next

    %= ... =%

    rem Test for spaces 
    if "%char%"==" " echo space         & goto :next

    rem Test the rest of the options
    if %char%==1 echo one               & goto :next
    if %char%==! echo exclamation       & goto :next

    %= ... =%

    rem Once done, go to next character

:next
    set "myText=%myText:~1%"
    if defined myText goto :loop

:done
    exit /b

Answer 2

You need to make sure there is clearly something to evaluate, even when there is nothing or only white-space to evaluate, so try this:

if [%char%]==[] (...do something...)
if [%char%]==[0] (...do something...)
if [%char%]==[1] (...do something...)
etc...