How to run multiple BAT files within a BAT file

Question

I m trying to get my commit-build bat to execute other  BAT files as part of our build process   Content of commit-build bat    msbuild bat   unit-tests bat   deploy bat    This seems simple enough  but commit-build bat only executes the first item in the list  msbuild bat    I have run each of the files separately with no problems

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Just use the call command  Here is an example   call msbuild bat call unit-tests bat call deploy bat

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If we have two batch scripts  aaa bat and bbb bat  and call like below  call aaa bat call bbb bat   When executing the script  it will call aaa bat first  wait for the thread of aaa bat terminate  and call bbb bat   But if you don t want to wait for aaa bat to terminate to call bbb bat  try to use the START command   START   title     D path    I    MIN    MAX    SEPARATE    SHARED      LOW    NORMAL    HIGH    REALTIME    ABOVENORMAL    BELOWNORMAL      AFFINITY  lt hex affinity gt     WAIT    B   command program     parameters    Exam   start  b aaa bat start  b bbb bat

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Start msbuild bat Start unit-tests bat Start deploy bat   If that doesn t work  replace start with call or try this   Start msbuild bat Goto  1  1 Start unit-tests bat Goto  2  2 Start deploy bat

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Run Multiple Batch Files Parallelly start  quot systemLogCollector quot   min cmd  k call systemLogCollector bat start  quot uiLogCollector quot   min cmd  k call uiLogCollector bat start  quot appLogCollector quot   min cmd  k call appLogCollector bat   Here three batch files are run on separate command windows in a minimized state  If you don t want them minimized  then remove  min  Also  if you don t need to control them later  then you can get rid of the titles  So  a bare-bone command will be- start cmd  k call systemLogCollector bat  If you want to terminate them- taskkill  FI  quot WindowTitle eq appLogCollector  quot   T  F taskkill  FI  quot WindowTitle eq uiLogCollector  quot   T  F taskkill  FI  quot WindowTitle eq systemLogCollector  quot   T  F

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You are calling multiple batches in an effort to compile a program  I take for granted that if an error occurs  1  The program within the batch will exit with an errorlevel  2  You want to know about it   for   b in   msbuild bat   unit-tests bat   deploy bat   do call   b   exit  b 1        tests for an errorlevel higher than 0   This way all batches are called in order but will stop at any error  leaving the screen as it is for you to see any error message

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using  quot  amp  quot  As you have noticed executing the bat directly without CALL START  CMD  C causes to enter and execute the first file and then the process to stop as the first file is finished  Though you still can use  amp  which will be the same as using command1  amp  command2 directly in the console        first bat   amp       second bat   amp        third bat   amp       echo other commands    In a term of machine resources this will be the most efficient way though in the last block you won t be able to use command line GOTO SHIFT SETLOCAL   and its capabilities will almost the same as in executing commands in the command prompt  And you won t be able to execute other command after the last closing bracket Using CALL call first bat call second bat call third bat  In most of the cases it will be best approach - it does not create a separate process but has almost identical behaviour as calling a  label as subroutine  In MS terminology it creates a new  quot batch file context and pass control to the statement after the specified label  The first time the end of the batch file is encountered  that is  after jumping to the label   control returns to the statement after the call statement  quot  You can use variables set in the called files  if they are not set in a SETLOCAL block   you can access directly labels in the called file  CMD  C  Pipes  FOR  F Other native option is to use CMD  C  the  C switch will force the called console to exit and return the control  Something that cmd exe is doing in non transparent way with using FOR  F against bat file or when pipes are used  This will spawn a child process that will have all the environment ot the calling bat  Less efficient in terms of resources but as the process is separate  parsing crashes or calling an EXIT command will not stop the calling  bat  echo off CMD  c first bat CMD  C second bat    not so different than the above lines     MORE FINDSTR FIND command will be able to read the piped data     passed from the left side  break third bat  START Allows you more flexibility as the capability to start the scripts in separate window   to not wait them to finish  setting a title and so on  By default it starts the  bat and  cmd scripts with CMD  K which means that the spawned scripts will not close automatically Again passes all the environment to the started scripts and consumes more resources than cmd  c     will be executed in the same console window and will wait to finish start  quot  quot   b  w cmd  c first bat     will start in a separate console window and WONT wait to be finished    the second console window wont close automatically so second bat might need explicit exit command start  quot  quot  second bat    Will start it in a separate window  but will wait to finish    closing the second window will cause Y N prompt    in the original window  start  quot  quot   w third cmd     will start it in the same console window    but wont wait to finish  May lead to a little bit confusing output start  quot  quot   b cmd  c fourth bat  WMIC Unlike the other methods from now on the examples will use external of the CMD exe utilities  still available on Windows by default   WMIC utility will create completely separate process so you wont be able directly to wait to finish  Though the best feature of WMIC is that it returns the id of the spawned process     will create a separate process with cmd exe  c WMIC process call create  quot  cd  first bat quot   quot  cd  quot     you can get the PID and monitoring it with other tools for  f  quot tokens 2 delims     quot      in   WMIC process call create  quot  cd  second bat quot    quot  cd  quot    find  quot ProcessId quot    do       set  quot PID     quot    echo  PID   You can also use it to start a process on a remote machine   with different user and so on  SCHTASKS Using SCHTASKS provides some features as  obvious  scheduling   running as another user  even the system user    remote machine start and so on  Again starts it in completely separate environment  i e  its own variables  and even a hidden process  xml file with command parameters and so on   SCHTASKS  create  tn BatRunner  tr  quot  cd  first bat quot   sc ONCE  sd 01 01 1910  st 00 00 SCHTASKS  Run  TN BatRunner SCHTASKS  Delete  TN BatRunner  F  Here the PID also can acquired from the event log  ScriptRunner Offers some timeout between started scripts  Basic transaction capabilities  i e  rollback on error  and the parameters can be put in a separate XML file    if the script is not finished after 15 seconds  i e  ends with pause  it will be killed ScriptRunner exe -appvscript  cd  first bat -appvscriptrunnerparameters -wait -timeout 15     will wait or the first called script before to start the second    if any of the scripts exit with errorcode different than 0 will try    try to restore the system in the original state ScriptRunner exe -appvscript second cmd arg1 arg2 -appvscriptrunnerparameters -wait -rollbackonerror -appvscript third bat -appvscriptrunnerparameters -wait -timeout 30 -rollbackonerror

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Use   call msbuild bat call unit-tests bat call deploy bat   When not using CALL  the current batch file stops and the called batch file starts executing  It s a peculiar behavior dating back to the early MS-DOS days

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I know I am a bit late to the party  but here is another way   That is  this method should wait until the first one is done  the second  and so on  start  quot  quot   wait cmd exe  c msbuild bat start  quot  quot   wait cmd exe  c unit-tests bat start  quot  quot   wait cmd exe  c deploy bat  The only issue that may come out of using this method  is that with new instances of cmd exe being spawned  is that Errorlevel checking is kept within in each instance of cmd exe  Or   start  quot  quot   wait call msbuild bat start  quot  quot   wait call unit-tests bat start  quot  quot   wait call deploy bat  Hope this helps

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Looking at your filenames  have you considered using a build tool like NAnt or Ant  the Java version   You ll get a lot more control than with bat files

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Try    call msbuild bat call unit-tests bat call deploy bat

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call msbuild bat call unit-tests bat call deploy bat

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If you want to open many batch files at once you can use the call command  However  the call command closes the current bat file and goes to another  If you want to open many at once  you may want to try this    echo off start cmd  call ex1 bat amp ex2 bat amp ex3 bat    And so on or repeat start cmd  call     for however many files  This works for Windows nbsp 7  but I am  not sure about other systems

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All the other answers are correct  use call  For example    call  msbuild bat    History  In ancient DOS versions it was not possible to recursively execute batch files  Then the call command was introduced that called another cmd shell to execute the batch file and returned execution back to the calling cmd shell when finished   Obviously in later versions no other cmd shell was necessary anymore   In the early days many batch files depended on the fact that calling a batch file would not return to the calling batch file  Changing that behaviour without additional syntax would have broken many systems like batch menu systems  using batch files for menu structures    As in many cases with Microsoft  backward compatibility therefore is the reason for this behaviour   Tips  If your batch files have spaces in their names  use quotes around the name   call  unit tests bat    By the way  if you do not have all the names of the batch files  you could also use for to do this  it does not guarantee the correct order of batch file calls  it follows the order of the file system    FOR  x IN    bat  DO call   x    You can also react on errorlevels after a call  Use   exit  B 1     Or any other integer value in 0  255   to give back an errorlevel  0 denotes correct execution  In the calling batch file you can react using  if errorlevel neq 0  lt batch command gt    Use if errorlevel 1 if you have an older Windows than NT4 2000 XP to catch all errorlevels 1 and greater   To control the flow of a batch file  there is goto  -   if errorlevel 2 goto label2 if errorlevel 1 goto label1      label1      label2       As others pointed out  have a look at build systems to replace batch files

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With correct quoting  this can be tricky sometimes    start     D  C  Program Files ProgramToLaunch   cmd exe    c call   C  Program Files ProgramToLaunch programname bat      1st arg - Title  empty in this case  2nd arg -  D specifies starting directory  can be ommited if want the current working dir  such as    dp0   3rd arg - command to launch   cmd exe  4th arg - arguments to command  with doubled up quotes for the arguments inside it  this is how you escape quotes within quotes in batch

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Running multiple scripts in one I had the same issue   I kept having it die on the first one not realizing that it was exiting on the first script      OneScriptToRunThemAll bat CALL ScriptA bat CALL ScriptB bat EXIT     ScriptA bat Do Foo EXIT   ScriptB bat Do bar EXIT   I removed all 11 of my scripts EXIT lines and tried again and all 11 ran in order one at a time in the same command window      OneScriptToRunThemAll bat CALL ScriptA bat CALL ScriptB bat EXIT    ScriptA bat Do Foo    ScriptB bat Do bar

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If we want to open multiple command prompts then we could use  start cmd  k    k  is compulsory which will execute   Launching many command prompts can be done as below   start cmd  k Call rc hub bat 4444  start cmd  k Call rc grid1 bat 5555  start cmd  k Call rc grid1 bat 6666  start cmd  k Call rc grid1 bat 5570

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To call a  bat file within a  bat file  use  call foo bat    Yes  this is silly  it would make more sense if you could call it with foo bat  like you could from the command prompt  but the correct way is to use call

[batch-file] How to run multiple .BAT files within a .BAT file

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