Unforunetly this is from a DOS boot disk.
But I did find an answer.....sometime googling for the obvious helps...I googled on "batch file reading from a file into a variable" (without the quotes) and it return this MS page

DIR C:\ /b | FIND "game" >A:\textfile

COPY init.txt+textfile varset.bat

call varset.bat

c:

cd\%varname%

In this code snipt it is looking for a directory that contins the string "game" and then changes to it.
Though I don't think this code is bullet proof, it does work in the small fish pond that I need it to....I think.