CALL command vs START with WAIT option

Question

How is the START command with a WAIT option   START  wait notepad exe  START  wait  notepad exe       any different from using a CALL command   CALL notepad exe  CALL notepad exe    Is there a situation where one may behave differently that the other dependending on what is being executed

User · Answer

I think that they should perform generally the same, but there are some differences. START is generally used to start applications or to start the default application for a given file type. That way if you START http://mywebsite.com it doesn't do START iexplore.exe http://mywebsite.com.

START myworddoc.docx would start Microsoft Word and open myworddoc.docx.CALL myworddoc.docx does the same thing... however START provides more options for the window state and things of that nature. It also allows process priority and affinity to be set.

In short, given the additional options provided by start, it should be your tool of choice.

START ["title"] [/D path] [/I] [/MIN] [/MAX] [/SEPARATE | /SHARED]
  [/LOW | /NORMAL | /HIGH | /REALTIME | /ABOVENORMAL | /BELOWNORMAL]
  [/NODE <NUMA node>] [/AFFINITY <hex affinity mask>] [/WAIT] [/B]
  [command/program] [parameters]

"title"     Title to display in window title bar.
path        Starting directory.
B           Start application without creating a new window. The
            application has ^C handling ignored. Unless the application
            enables ^C processing, ^Break is the only way to interrupt
            the application.
I           The new environment will be the original environment passed
            to the cmd.exe and not the current environment.
MIN         Start window minimized.
MAX         Start window maximized.
SEPARATE    Start 16-bit Windows program in separate memory space.
SHARED      Start 16-bit Windows program in shared memory space.
LOW         Start application in the IDLE priority class.
NORMAL      Start application in the NORMAL priority class.
HIGH        Start application in the HIGH priority class.
REALTIME    Start application in the REALTIME priority class.
ABOVENORMAL Start application in the ABOVENORMAL priority class.
BELOWNORMAL Start application in the BELOWNORMAL priority class.
NODE        Specifies the preferred Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA)
            node as a decimal integer.
AFFINITY    Specifies the processor affinity mask as a hexadecimal number.
            The process is restricted to running on these processors.

            The affinity mask is interpreted differently when /AFFINITY and
            /NODE are combined.  Specify the affinity mask as if the NUMA
            node's processor mask is right shifted to begin at bit zero.
            The process is restricted to running on those processors in
            common between the specified affinity mask and the NUMA node.
            If no processors are in common, the process is restricted to
            running on the specified NUMA node.
WAIT        Start application and wait for it to terminate.

User · Answer

There is a useful difference between call and start  wait when calling regsvr32 exe  s for example  also referenced by Gary in  in his answer to how-do-i-get-the-application-exit-code-from-a-windows-command-line  call regsvr32 exe  s broken dll echo  errorlevel    will always return 0 but  start  wait regsvr32 exe  s broken dll echo  errorlevel    will return the error level from regsvr32 exe

User · Answer

This is an old thread  but I have just encountered this situation and discovered a neat way around it  I was trying to run a setup exe  but the focus was returning to the next line of the script without waiting for the setup exe to finish   I tried the above solutions with no luck   In the end  piping the command through more did the trick   setup exe  arguments    more

User · Answer

For exe files  I suppose the differences are nearly unimportant  But to start an exe you don t even need CALL     When starting another batch it s a big difference  as CALL will start it in the same window and the called batch has access  to the same variable context  So it can also change variables which affects the caller     START will create a new cmd exe for the called batch and without  b it will open a new window  As it s a new context  variables can t be shared   Differences  Using start  wait  lt prog gt  - Changes of environment variables are lost when the  lt prog gt  ends - The caller waits until the  lt prog gt  is finished  Using call  lt prog gt  - For exe it can be ommited  because it s equal to just starting  lt prog gt  - For an exe-prog the caller batch waits or starts the exe asynchronous  but the behaviour depends on the exe itself  - For batch files  the caller batch continues  when the called  lt batch-file gt  finishes  WITHOUT call the control will not return to the caller batch  Addendum     Using CALL can change the parameters  for batch and exe files   but only when they contain carets or percent signs   call myProg param1 param  2  param 3    path     Will be expanded to  from within an batch file     myProg param1 param2 param  3  lt content of path gt

User · Answer

Call  Calls one batch program from another without stopping the parent batch program  The call command accepts labels as the target of the call  Call has no effect at the command-line when used outside of a script or batch file  https   technet microsoft com en-us library bb490873 aspx  Start  Starts a separate Command Prompt window to run a specified program or command  Used without parameters  start opens a second command prompt window  https   technet microsoft com en-us library bb491005 aspx

User · Answer

This is what I found while running batch files in parallel  multiple instances of the same bat file at the same time with different input parameters     Lets say that you have an exe file that performs a long task called  LongRunningTask exe  If you call the exe directly from the bat file  only the first call to the LongRunningTask will succed  while the rest will get an OS error  File is already in use by the process   If you use this command    start  B  WAIT     LongRunningTask exe   parameters   You will be able to run multiple instances of the bat and exe  while still waiting for the task to finish before the bat continues executing the remaining commands  The  B option is to avoid creating another window  the empty quotes are needed in order to the command to work  see the reference below   Note that if you don  t use the  WAIT in the start  the LongRunningTask will be executed at the same time than the remaining commands in the batch file  so it might create problems if one of these commands requires the output of the LongRunningTask  Resuming    This can  t run in parallel     call LongRunningTask exe    This will run in parallel and will be ok as far as there are no data dependencies between the output of the command and the rest of the bat file     start  B     LongRunningTask exe   parameters    This will run in parallel and wait for the task to finish  so you can use the output     start  B  WAIT     LongRunningTask exe   parameters    Reference for the start command   How can I run a program from a batch file without leaving the console open after the program start

[windows] CALL command vs. START with /WAIT option

Examples related to windows

Examples related to batch-file