Set output of a command as a variable with pipes

Question

Can you redirect the output of a command to a variable with pipes   I haven t tried much as I haven t been able to think of anything to try  but I have tried one method  with two variations      For example   echo Hello set text    Didn t work  neither did   echo Hello   set text    I know you can do it fairly easily with the FOR command  but I think it would look  nicer  with a pipe   And if you re wondering  I don t have a specific reason I m asking this other than I m curious and I can t find the answer

User · Answer

I find myself a tad amazed at the lack of what I consider the best answer to this question anywhere on the internet. I struggled for many years to find the answer. Many answers online come close, but none really answer it. The real answer is

(cmd & echo.) >2 & (set /p =)<2

The "secret sauce" being the "closely guarded coveted secret" that "echo." sends a CR/LF (ENTER/new line/0x0D0A). Otherwise, what I am doing here is redirecting the output of the first command to the standard error stream. I then redirect the standard error stream into the standard input stream for the "set /p =" command.

Example:

(echo foo & echo.) >2 & (set /p bar=)<2

User · Answer

Your way can t work for two reasons     You need to use set  p text  for setting the variable with user input  The other problem is the pipe  A pipe starts two asynchronous cmd exe instances and after finishing the job both instances are closed     That s the cause why it seems that the variables are not set  but a small example shows that they are set but the result is lost later   set myVar origin echo Hello    set  p myVar   amp  set myVar  set myVar   Outputs  Hello origin   Alternatives  You can use the FOR loop to get values into variables or also temp files   for  f  delims     A in   echo hello   do set  var   A  echo  var    or   gt output tmp echo Hello  gt  gt output tmp echo world   lt output tmp     set  p line1    set  p line2    echo  line1  echo  line2    Alternative with a macro   You can use a batch macro  this is a bit like the bash equivalent     echo off  REM     Get version string    set  versionString  ver  echo The version is  versionString 0    REM     Get all drive letters    set  driveLetters  wmic logicaldisk get name  value   findstr  Name   call  ShowVariable driveLetters   The definition of the macro can be found at SO Assign output of a program to a variable using a MS batch file

User · Answer

In a batch file I usually create a file in the temp directory and append output from a program  then I call it with a variable-name to set that variable  Like this      Create a set var cmd file containing  set  1  set  p  set   1   lt nul gt   temp  set var cmd      Append output from a command ipconfig   find  IPv4   gt  gt    temp  set var cmd  call   temp  set var cmd  IPAddress echo  IPAddress

User · Answer

The lack of a Linux-like backtick backquote facility is a major annoyance of the pre-PowerShell world  Using backquotes via for-loops is not at all cosy  So we need kinda of setvar myvar cmd-line command   In my  path  I have a dir with a number of bins and batches to cope with those Win shortcomings    One batch I wrote is       setvar varname cmd    Set VARNAME to the output of CMD    Triple escape pipes  eg     setvar x  dir c        sort     -----------------------------   echo off SETLOCAL     Get command from argument  for  F  tokens 1      a in        do set cmd   b     Get output and set var for  F  usebackq delims     a in    cmd    do        ENDLOCAL      set  1   a       Show results  SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion echo  1   1     So in your case  you would type     gt  setvar text echo Hello text Hello    The script informs you of the results  which means you can    gt  echo text var is now  text  text var is now Hello    You can use whatever command    gt  setvar text FIND  Jones  names txt   What if the command you want to pipe to some variable contains itself a pipe  Triple escape it           gt  setvar text dir c        find  Win

User · Answer

THIS DOESN T USE PIPEs  but requires a single tempfile I used this to put simplified timestamps into a lowtech daily maintenance batfile We have already Short-formatted our System-Time to HHmm   which is 2245 for 10 45PM  I direct output of Maint-Routines to logfiles with a  DATE   TIME  timestamp        but  TIME  is a long ugly string  ex  224513 56  for down to the hundredths of a sec   SOLUTION OVERVIEW  1  Use redirection       to send the command  TIME  T  everytime to OVERWRITE a temp-file in the  TEMP  DIRECTORY 2  Then use that tempfile as the input to set a new variable  I called it NOW  3  Replace echo  DATE   TIME  blah-blah-blah     logfile   nbsp   nbsp   nbsp  with echo  DATE   NOW  blah-blah-blah     logfile      DIFFERENCE IN OUTPUT  BEFORE  SUCCESSFUL TIMESYNCH 29Dec14 222552 30 AFTER  SUCCESSFUL TIMESYNCH 29Dec14 2252  ACTUAL CODE  TIME  T    TEMP  DailyTemp txt SET  p NOW  lt  TEMP  DailyTemp txt echo  DATE   NOW  blah-blah-blah     logfile   AFTERMATH  All that remains afterwards is the appended logfile  and constantly overwritten tempfile  And if the Tempfile is ever deleted  it will be re-created as necessary

User · Answer

You can set the output to a temporary file and the read the data from the file after that you can delete the temporary file  echo  date  gt temp txt set  p myVarDate   lt  temp txt echo Date is  myVarDate  del temp txt  In this variable myVarDate contains the output of command

[batch-file] Set output of a command as a variable (with pipes)

Examples related to batch-file