Nice to know.

However, the WMIC method fails as presented. The for statement does not like parentheses in the pathname [C:\Program Files (x86)\WinSCP\WinSCP.exe] though it works if I change Program Files (x86) to progra~2 - not an option because I don't know that's the case on all machines this script runs on, though it should be.... The PowerShell and makecab methods are far longer than I wanted to spend in these scripts...

Copying the executable to c:\temp\ first and pointing wmic at that copy takes a second, but it's faster than opening a connection, and it works. Escaping the closing parentheses in the pathname also works: C:\\Program Files (x86^)\\WinSCP\\WinSCP.exe. Oddly, it doesn't need to have the opening paren escaped, too...

See How do I retrieve the version of a file from a batch file on Windows Vista?

So far, the only way I've found to get the WinSCP version number in a batch file is to open a connection and close it, then look at the log. Like this...

Most env vars are self-explanatory. SCP_PAR (for parameters) is, in this case, /script=[script] /log=%SCPLOG%. The two other calls are just a quick explanation to the user of how to install (:winscp_bad) and looking for basic problems, like no connection, bad password, etc (:check_log)

I guess the question is, is there a way to get the version number from the command line without going through all this, or, if not, is there a way to get WinSCP to generate a log file without actually opening a connection? I'd like to speed this up...