How can I debug a BAT script

Question

Is there a way to step through a  bat script  The thing is  I have a build script   which calls a lot of other scripts  and I would like to see what is the order in which they are called  so that I may know where exactly I have to go about and add my modifications

User · Answer

Facing similar concern  I found the following tool with a trivial Google search    JPSoft s  Take Command  includes a batch file IDE debugger  Their short presentation video demonstrates it nicely   I m using the trial version since a few hours  Here is my first humble opinion    On one side  it indeed allows debugging  bat and  cmd scripts and I m now convinced it can help in quite some cases On the other hand  it sometimes blocks and I had to kill it    specially when debugging subscripts  not always systematically    it doesn t show a  call stack  nor a  step out  button    It deverves a try

User · Answer

Or      Call your main  bat file from another  bat file and output the result to a result file i e   runner bat   mainresults txt  Where runner bat calls the main  bat file  You should see all the actions performed in the main  bat file now

User · Answer

The only way I can think of is spinkle the code with echos and pauses

User · Answer

or  open a cmd window  then call the batch from there  the output will be on the screen

User · Answer

you can use cmd  k at the end of your script to see the error  it won t close your command prompt after the execution is done

User · Answer

I don t know of anyway to step through the execution of a  bat file but you can use echo and pause to help with debugging      ECHO   Will echo a message in the batch file  Such as ECHO Hello World will print Hello World on the screen when executed  However  without  ECHO OFF at the beginning of the batch file you ll also get  ECHO Hello World  and  Hello World   Finally  if you d just like to create a blank line  type ECHO  adding the period at the end creates an empty line       PAUSE   Prompt the user to press any key to continue    Source  Batch File Help   workmad3  answer has more good tips for working with the echo command   Another helpful resource    DDB  DOS Batch File Tips

User · Answer

Make sure there are no  echo off  statements in the scripts and call  echo on  after calling each script to reset any you have missed   The reason is that if echo is left on  then the command interpreter will output each command  after parameter processing  before executing it  Makes it look really bad for using in production  but very useful for debugging purposes as you can see where output has gone wrong   Also  make sure you are checking the ErrorLevels set by the called batch scripts and programs  Remember that there are 2 different methods used in  bat files for this  If you called a program  the Error level is in  ERRORLEVEL   while from batch files the error level is returned in the ErrorLevel variable and doesn t need   s around it

User · Answer

I found  running steps   win32  software doing exactly what I was looking for  http   www steppingsoftware com   You can load a bat file  place breakpoints   start stepping through it while seeing the output and environment variables   The evaluation version only allows to step through 50 lines    Does anyone have a free alternative with similar functionality

User · Answer

A quite frequent issue is that a batch script is run by double-clicking its icon  Since the hosting Command Prompt  cmd exe  instance also terminates as soon as the batch script is finished  it is not possible to read potential output and error messages  To read such messages  it is very important that you explicitly open a Command Prompt window  manoeuvre to the applicable working directory and run the batch script by typing its path name

User · Answer

rem out the  ECHO OFF and call your batch file redirectin ALL output to a log file    c   yourbatch bat  optional parameters    yourlogfile txt 2  amp 1  found at http   www robvanderwoude com battech debugging php  IT WORKS   don t forget the 2  amp 1     WIZ

User · Answer

Did you try to reroute the result to a file  Like whatever bat  log txt  You have to make sure that in this case every other called script is also logging to the file like   log txt  Also if you put a date  T and time  T in the beginning and in the end of that batch file  you will get the times it was at that point and you can map your script running time and order

User · Answer

Or      Call your main  bat file from another  bat file and output the result to a result file i e   runner bat   mainresults txt  Where runner bat calls the main  bat file  You should see all the actions performed in the main  bat file now

[windows] How can I debug a .BAT script?

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