How do I make a batch file terminate upon encountering an error

Question

I have a batch file that s calling the same executable over and over with different parameters   How do I make it terminate immediately if one of the calls returns an error code of any level   Basically  I want the equivalent of MSBuild s ContinueOnError false

User · Answer

echo off  set startbuild  TIME   C  WINDOWS Microsoft NET Framework v3 5 msbuild exe c  link xml  flp1 logfile c  link errors log errorsonly  flp2 logfile c  link warnings log warningsonly    goto  error  copy c  app offline htm    lawpccnweb01 d  websites OperationsLinkWeb app offline htm   del   lawpccnweb01 d  websites OperationsLinkWeb bin   Q  echo Start Copy   TIME   set copystart  TIME   xcopy C  link  PublishedWebsites OperationsLink   lawpccnweb01 d  websites OperationsLinkWeb   s  y  d  del   lawpccnweb01 d  websites OperationsLinkWeb app offline htm  echo Started Build   startbuild  echo Started Copy   copystart  echo Finished Copy   TIME   c  link warnings log   error  c  link errors log

User · Answer

One minor update  you should change the checks for  if errorlevel 1  to the following     IF  ERRORLEVEL  NEQ 0    This is because on XP you can get negative numbers as errors  0   no problems  anything else is a problem    And keep in mind the way that DOS handles the  IF ERRORLEVEL  tests   It will return true if the number you are checking for is that number or higher so if you are looking for specific error numbers you need to start with 255 and work down

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We cannot always depend on ERRORLEVEL  because many times external programs or batch scripts do not return exit codes   In that case we can use generic checks for failures like this   IF EXIST  outfile   DEL  F  outfile   CALL some script bat -o  outfile  IF NOT EXIST  outfile    ECHO ERROR  amp  EXIT  b    And if the program outputs something to console  we can check it also   some program exe 2 gt  amp 1   FIND  error message here   amp  amp   ECHO ERROR  amp  EXIT  b  some program exe 2 gt  amp 1   FIND  Done processing       ECHO ERROR  amp  EXIT  b

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Here is a polyglot program for BASH and Windows CMD that runs a series of commands and quits out if any of them fail      bin bash 2 gt  nul     set -o errexit    function goto     return        command 1    goto  error  command 2    goto  error  command 3    goto  error     exit 0 exit  b 0   error exit  b  errorlevel    I have used this type of thing in the past for a multiple platform continuous integration script

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Check the errorlevel in an if statement  and then exit  b  exit the batch file only  not the entire cmd exe process  for values other than 0   same-executable-over-and-over exe  with different  parameters  if  errorlevel  neq 0 exit  b  errorlevel    If you want the value of the errorlevel to propagate outside of your batch file  if  errorlevel  neq 0 exit  b  errorlevel    but if this is inside a for it gets a bit tricky  You ll need something more like   setlocal enabledelayedexpansion for   f in  C  Windows    do       same-executable-over-and-over exe  with different  parameters      if  errorlevel  neq 0 exit  b  errorlevel      Edit  You have to check the error after each command  There s no global  on error goto  type of construct in cmd exe command com batch  I ve also updated my code per CodeMonkey  although I ve never encountered a negative errorlevel in any of my batch-hacking on XP or Vista

User · Answer

I prefer the OR form of command  as I find them the most readable  as opposed to having an if after each command   However  the naive way of doing this  command    exit  b  ERRORLEVEL  is wrong   This is because batch expands variables when a line is first read  rather than when they are being used  This means that if the command in the line above fails  the batch file exits properly  but it exits with return code 0  because that is what the value of  ERRORLEVEL  was at the start of the line  Obviously  this is undesirable in our script  so we have to enable delayed expansion  like so   SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion  command-1    exit  b  ERRORLEVEL  command-2    exit  b  ERRORLEVEL  command-3    exit  b  ERRORLEVEL  command-4    exit  b  ERRORLEVEL    This snippet will execute commands 1-4  and if any of them fails  it will exit with the same exit code as the failing command did

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The shortest   command    exit  b   If you need  you can set the exit code   command    exit  b 666   And you can also log   command    echo ERROR  amp  amp  exit  b

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No matter how I tried  the errorlevel always stays 0 even when msbuild failed  So I built my workaround   Build Project and save log to Build log  SET Build Opt  flp summary logfile Build log append true  msbuild  myproj csproj   t rebuild  p Configuration release  fl  Build Opt    search for  0 Error  string in build log  set the result to var  FOR  F  tokens   USEBACKQ    F IN   find  c  i  0 Error  Build log   DO       SET var   F   echo  var    get the last character  which indicates how many lines contains the search string   set result  var  -1   echo   result     if string not found  then error   0  build failed   if   result     0    echo  build failed      That solution was inspired by Mechaflash s post at How to set commands output as a variable in a batch file   and https   ss64 com nt syntax-substring html

User · Answer

Add    goto  label to each line  and then define a  label   For example  create this  cmd file    echo off  echo Starting very complicated batch file    ping -invalid-arg    goto  error echo OH noes  this shouldn t have succeeded  goto  EOF   error echo Failed with error   errorlevel   exit  b  errorlevel    See also question about exiting batch file subroutine

[batch-file] How do I make a batch file terminate upon encountering an error?

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