Batch file Find if substring is in string not in a file

Question

In a batch file  I have a string abcdefg   I want to check if bcd is in the string     Unfortunately it seems all of the solutions I m finding search a file for a substring  not a string for a substring   Is there an easy solution for this

User · Answer

The solutions that search a file for a substring can also search a string  eg  find or findstr  In your case  the easy solution would be to pipe a string into the command instead of supplying a filename eg    case-sensitive string  echo  abcdefg    find  bcd   ignore case of string  echo  abcdefg    find  I  bcd   IF no match found  you will get a blank line response on CMD and  ERRORLEVEL  set to 1

User · Answer

Better answer was here   set  i hello   world  set i find       gt nul  amp  amp  echo contains    echo not contains

User · Answer

You can pipe the source string to findstr and check the value of ERRORLEVEL to see if the pattern string was found   A value of zero indicates success and the pattern was found   Here is an example        Y CMD - Test if pattern in string   P1 - the pattern   P2 - the string to check     echo off  echo  2   findstr  C   1  1 gt nul  if errorlevel 1     echo  got one - pattern not found   ELSE     echo  got zero - found pattern     When this is run in CMD EXE  we get   C  DemoDev gt y pqrs  abc def pqr 123   got one - pattern not found  C  DemoDev gt y pqr  abc def pqr 123    got zero - found pattern

User · Answer

If you are detecting for presence  here s the easiest solution   SET STRING F00BAH SET SUBSTRING F00 ECHO  STRING    FINDSTR  C   SUBSTRING    gt nul  amp  IF ERRORLEVEL 1  ECHO CASE TRUE  else  ECHO CASE FALSE    This works great for dropping the output of windows commands into a boolean variable   Just replace the echo with the command you want to run   You can also string Findstr s together to further qualify a statement using pipes   E G  for Service Control  SC exe    SC QUERY WUAUSERV   findstr  C  STATE    FINDSTR  C  RUNNING   amp  IF ERRORLEVEL 1  ECHO case True  else  ECHO CASE FALSE    That one evaluates the output of SC Query for windows update services which comes out as a multiline text  finds the line containing  state  then finds if the word  running  occurs on that line  and sets the errorlevel accordingly

User · Answer

For compatibility and ease of use it s often better to use FIND to do this  You must also consider if you would like to match case sensitively or case insensitively  The method with 78 points  I believe I was referring to paxdiablo s post  will only match Case Sensitively  so you must put a separate check for every case variation for every possible iteration you may want to match    What a pain  At only 3 letters that means 9 different tests in order to accomplish the check    In addition  many times it is preferable to match command output  a variable in a loop  or the value of a pointer variable in your batch CMD which is not as straight forward  For these reasons this is a preferable alternative methodology  Use  Find   I    V   quot Characters to Match quot    I   case Insensitive    V   Must NOT contain the characters  As Single Line  ECHO  Variable    FIND  I  quot ABC quot  gt Nul  amp  amp    Echo Found  quot ABC quot         Echo Did not find  quot ABC quot     Multi-line  ECHO  Variable   FIND  I  quot ABC quot  gt Nul  amp  amp       Echo Found  quot ABC quot           Echo Did not find  quot ABC quot     As mentioned this is great for things which are not in variables which allow string substitution as well  FOR  A IN      quot Some long string with Spaces does not contain the expected string quot    oihu AljB   lojkAbCk   Something Else   quot Going to evaluate this entire string for ABC as well  quot    DO     ECHO   A  FIND  I  quot ABC quot  gt Nul  amp  amp        Echo Found  quot ABC quot  in  quot  A quot           Echo Did not find  quot ABC quot       Output From a command       NLTest   FIND  I  quot ABC quot  gt Nul  amp  amp    Echo Found  quot ABC quot         Echo Did not find  quot ABC quot     As you can see this is the superior way to handle the check for multiple reasons

User · Answer

I m probably coming a bit too late with this answer  but the accepted answer only works for checking whether a  hard-coded string  is a part of the search string   For dynamic search  you would have to do this   SET searchString abcd1234 SET key cd123  CALL SET keyRemoved   searchString  key      IF NOT  x keyRemoved     x searchString         ECHO Contains      Note  You can take the two variables as arguments

User · Answer

To find a text in the Var  Example  var text  quot demo string test quot  Echo  var text    findstr  C  quot test quot  gt nul  amp  amp        echo  quot found test quot            Echo  var text    findstr  C  quot String quot  gt nul  amp  amp                 echo  quot found String with S uppercase letter quot                           echo  quot Not Found  quot          LEGEND    amp    Execute that AND execute this     Ex  Execute that IF FAIL execute this  amp  amp   Ex  Execute that IF SUCCESSFUL execute this  gt nul  no echo result of command findstr  C    Use string as a literal search string

User · Answer

ECHO  String   FINDSTR  C   Substring    amp  amp   Instructions

User · Answer

I usually do something like this   Echo  1   findstr  C   2  gt nul  amp  amp        REM TRUE            REM FALSE     Example   Echo Hello world   findstr  C  world  gt nul  amp  amp        Echo TRUE            Echo FALSE    Echo Hello world   findstr  C  World  gt nul  amp  amp   Echo TRUE      Echo FALSE    Output   TRUE FALSE   I don t know if this is the best way

User · Answer

Yes  you can use substitutions and check against the original string   if not x str1 bcd    x str1  echo It contains bcd   The  str1 bcd   bit will replace a bcd in str1 with an empty string  making it different from the original   If the original didn t contain a bcd string in it  the modified version will be identical   Testing with the following script will show it in action    setlocal enableextensions enabledelayedexpansion  echo off set str1  1 if not x str1 bcd    x str1  echo It contains bcd endlocal   And the results of various runs   c  testarea gt  testprog hello  c  testarea gt  testprog abcdef It contains bcd  c  testarea gt  testprog bcd It contains bcd   A couple of notes    The if statement is the meat of this solution  everything else is support stuff  The x before the two sides of the equality is to ensure that the string bcd works okay  It also protects against certain  improper  starting characters

[windows] Batch file: Find if substring is in string (not in a file)

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