Using parameters in batch files at Windows command line

Question

In Windows  how do you access arguments passed when a batch file is run     For example  let s say I have a program named hello bat   When I enter hello -a at a Windows command line  how do I let my program know that -a was passed in as an argument

User · Accepted Answer

As others have already said  parameters passed through the command line can be accessed in batch files with the notation  1 to  9  There are also two other tokens that you can use     0 is the executable  batch file  name as specified in the command line     is all parameters specified in the command line -- this is very useful if you want to forward the parameters to another program    There are also lots of important techniques to be aware of in addition to simply how to access the parameters   Checking if a parameter was passed  This is done with constructs like IF    1       which is true if and only if no arguments were passed at all  Note the tilde character which causes any surrounding quotes to be removed from the value of  1  without a tilde you will get unexpected results if that value includes double quotes  including the possibility of syntax errors   Handling more than 9 arguments  or just making life easier   If you need to access more than 9 arguments you have to use the command SHIFT  This command shifts the values of all arguments one place  so that  0 takes the value of  1   1 takes the value of  2  etc   9 takes the value of the tenth argument  if one is present   which was not available through any variable before calling SHIFT  enter command SHIFT    for more options    SHIFT is also useful when you want to easily process parameters without requiring that they are presented in a specific order  For example  a script may recognize the flags -a and -b in any order  A good way to parse the command line in such cases is   parse IF    1      GOTO endparse IF    1    -a  REM do something IF    1    -b  REM do something else SHIFT GOTO parse  endparse REM ready for action    This scheme allows you to parse pretty complex command lines without going insane   Substitution of batch parameters  For parameters that represent file names the shell provides lots of functionality related to working with files that is not accessible in any other way  This functionality is accessed with constructs that begin with      For example  to get the size of the file passed in as an argument use  ECHO   z1   To get the path of the directory where the batch file was launched from  very useful   you can use  ECHO   dp0   You can view the full range of these capabilities by typing CALL    in the command prompt

User · Answer

Use variables i e  the  BAT variables and called  0 to  9

User · Answer

Jon s  parse  endparse scheme is a great start  and he has my gratitude for the initial pass  but if you think that the Windows torturous batch system would let you off that easy    well  my friend  you are in for a shock  I have spent the whole day with this devilry  and after much painful research and experimentation I finally managed something viable for a real-life utility   Let us say that we want to implement a utility foobar  It requires an initial command  It has an optional parameter --foo which takes an optional value  which cannot be another parameter  of course   if the value is missing it defaults to default  It also has an optional parameter --bar which takes a required value  Lastly it can take a flag --baz with no value allowed  Oh  and these parameters can come in any order   In other words  it looks like this   foobar  lt command gt   --foo   lt fooval gt     --bar  lt barval gt    --baz    Complicated  No  that seems pretty typical of real life utilities   git anyone    Without further ado  here is a solution    ECHO OFF SETLOCAL REM FooBar parameter demo REM By Garret Wilson  SET CMD   1  IF   CMD             GOTO usage   SET FOO  SET DEFAULT FOO default SET BAR  SET BAZ   SHIFT  args SET PARAM   1 SET ARG   2 IF   PARAM       --foo      SHIFT   IF NOT   ARG               IF NOT   ARG  0 2       --          SET FOO  ARG        SHIFT       ELSE         SET FOO  DEFAULT FOO            ELSE       SET FOO  DEFAULT FOO        ELSE IF   PARAM       --bar      SHIFT   IF NOT   ARG               SET BAR  ARG      SHIFT     ELSE       ECHO Missing bar value  1 gt  amp 2     ECHO      GOTO usage       ELSE IF   PARAM       --baz      SHIFT   SET BAZ true   ELSE IF   PARAM             GOTO endargs   ELSE     ECHO Unrecognized option  1  1 gt  amp 2   ECHO    GOTO usage   GOTO args  endargs  ECHO Command   CMD  IF NOT   FOO             ECHO Foo   FOO    IF NOT   BAR             ECHO Bar   BAR    IF   BAZ       true      ECHO Baz    REM TODO do something with FOO  BAR  and or BAZ GOTO  eof   usage ECHO FooBar ECHO Usage  foobar   lt command  gt   --foo    lt fooval  gt     --bar   lt barval  gt    --baz  EXIT  B 1   Yes  it really is that bad  See my similar post at https   stackoverflow com a 50653047 421049  where I provide more analysis of what is going on in the logic  and why I used certain constructs   Hideous  Most of that I had to learn today  And it hurt

User · Answer

Using parameters in batch files   0 and  9  Batch files can refer to the words passed in as parameters with the tokens   0 to  9    0 is the program name as it was called   1 is the first command line parameter  2 is the second command line parameter and so on till  9    parameters passed in on the commandline must be alphanumeric characters and delimited by spaces   Since  0 is the program name as it was called  in DOS  0 will be empty for AUTOEXEC BAT if started at boot time   Example   Put the following command in a batch file called mybatch bat    echo off  echo hello  1  2 pause   Invoking the batch file like this  mybatch john billy would output   hello john billy   Get more than 9 parameters for a batch file  use      The Percent Star token    means  the rest of the parameters    You can use a for loop to grab them  as defined here   http   www robvanderwoude com parameters php  Notes about delimiters for batch parameters  Some characters in the command line parameters are ignored by batch files  depending on the DOS version  whether they are  escaped  or not  and often depending on their location in the command line   commas       are replaced by spaces  unless they are part of a string in  double quotes  semicolons       are replaced by spaces  unless they are part of a string in  double quotes      characters are sometimes replaced by spaces  not if they are part of a  string in double quotes  the first forward slash       is replaced by a space only if it immediately  follows the command  without a leading space  multiple spaces are replaced by a single space  unless they are part of a  string in double quotes  tabs are replaced by a single space  leading spaces before the first command line argument are ignored

User · Answer

Batch Files automatically pass the text after the program so long as their are variables to assign them to  They are passed in order they are sent  e g   1 will be the first string sent after the program is called  etc   If you have Hello bat and the contents are    echo off echo Hello   1 thanks for running this batch file   2  pause   and you invoke the batch in command via     hello bat APerson241  date    you should receive this message back   Hello  APerson241 thanks for running this batch file  01 11 2013

[windows] Using parameters in batch files at Windows command line

Checking if a parameter was passed

Handling more than 9 arguments (or just making life easier)

Substitution of batch parameters

Examples related to windows

Examples related to batch-file

Examples related to cmd

Examples related to parameters

Examples related to arguments