You're right, no scowring. However, some careful searching and reading did net me a solution and gave me the opposite of a scowl.

The original file is generated by another application and if I change it, I will destroy the configuration of the file and that would be bad, bad, bad. This is the solution I found and it seems to have worked like a charm, if anyone is interested.

 Code:
BREAK ON
CLS
COPY "\\server_name\confreuters$\Config\Fichiers_XML\toto.xml" "C:\Win32app\Reuters\"
shell '%comspec% /c type "C:\Win32app\Reuters\toto.xml" >> C:\test.txt'
$nul=OPEN(1,"C:\test.txt",2)
$allow = READLINE(1)
WHILE @ERROR=0
	$allow = READLINE(1)
	IF INSTR($allow,@WKSTA)
		GOTO DONE
	ELSE
	ENDIF
LOOP
GOTO END

:DONE
cls
? "Found it"
GOTO FINI

:END
cls
? "Not Found"

:FINI
close(1)


This is basically what I'm going to use, with some minor modifications to get rid of the copied file and the created file.