How do I get the result of a command in a variable in windows

Question

I m looking to get the result of a command as a variable in a Windows batch script  see how to get the result of a command in bash for the bash scripting equivalent    A solution that will work in a  bat file is preferred  but other common windows scripting solutions are also welcome

User · Answer

Please refer to this http   technet microsoft com en-us library bb490982 aspx which explains what you can do with command output

User · Answer

The humble for command has accumulated some interesting capabilities over the years   D   gt  FOR  F  delims    i IN   date  t   DO set today  i D   gt  echo  today  Sat 20 09 2008   Note that  delims   overwrites the default space and tab delimiters so that the output of the date command gets gobbled all at once   To capture multi-line output  it can still essentially be a one-liner  using the variable lf as the delimiter in the resulting variable    REM NB in a batch file  need to use   i not  i setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion SET lf - FOR  F  delims     i IN   dir    b   DO if    out         set out   i  else  set out  out  lf   i  ECHO  out    To capture a piped expression  use      FOR  F  delims     i IN   svn info      findstr  Root     DO set  URL   i

User · Answer

If you have to capture all the command output you can use a batch like this    ECHO OFF IF NOT   1      GOTO ADDV SET VAR  FOR  F   I IN   DIR   TXT  B  O D   DO CALL  0   I SET VAR GOTO END   ADDV SET VAR  VAR   1   END   All output lines are stored in VAR separated with        John  is there any practical use for this  I think you should watch PowerShell or any other programming language capable to perform scripting tasks easily  Python  Perl  PHP  Ruby

User · Answer

Just use the result from the FOR command  For example  inside a batch file    for  F  delims     I in   dir  b  a-d  od FILESA    do  echo   I    You can use the   I as the value you want  Just like this    I   And in advance the   I does not have any spaces or CR characters and can be used for comparisons

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If you re looking for the solution provided in Using the result of a command as an argument in bash   then here is the code    echo off if not   1      goto get basename pwd for  f  delims X    i in   cd   do call  0   i for  f  delims X    i in   dir  o d  b   do echo   i gt  gt  filename  txt goto end   get basename pwd set filename   n1   end    This will call itself with the result of the CD command  same as pwd  String extraction on parameters will return the filename folder  Get the contents of this folder and append to the filename txt    Credits   Thanks to all the other answers and some digging on the Windows XP commands page

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Example to set in the  V  environment variable the most recent file   FOR  F  I IN   DIR      O D  B   DO SET V  I   in a batch file you have to use double prefix in the loop variable   FOR  F   I IN   DIR      O D  B   DO SET V   I

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I would like to add a remark to the above solutions   All these syntaxes work perfectly well IF YOUR COMMAND IS FOUND WITHIN THE PATH or IF THE COMMAND IS A cmdpath WITHOUT SPACES OR SPECIAL CHARACTERS   But if you try to use an executable command located in a folder which path contains special characters then you would need to enclose your command path into double quotes     and then the FOR  F syntax does not work   Examples     for  f  tokens   USEBACKQ   f in          F  GLW7 Distrib System Shells and scripting f2ko de folderbrowse exe   Hello   F  GLW7 Distrib System Shells and scripting      do echo  f The filename  directory name  or volume label syntax is incorrect    or     for  f  tokens   USEBACKQ   f in           F  GLW7 Distrib System Shells and scripting f2ko de folderbrowse exe   Hello World   F  GLW7 Distrib System Shells and scripting     do echo  f  F  GLW7 Distrib System Shells  is not recognized as an internal or external command  operable program or batch file    or      for  f  tokens   USEBACKQ   f in           F  GLW7 Distrib System Shells and scripting f2ko de folderbrowse exe    Hello World   F  GLW7 Distrib System Shells and scripting     do echo  f   F  GLW7 Distrib System Shells and scripting f2ko de folderbrowse exe    Hello  is not recognized as an internal or external command  operable program or batch file    In that case  the only solution I found to use a command and store its result in a variable is to set  temporarily  the default directory to the one of command itself    pushd    d0  p0  FOR  F  tokens   USEBACKQ    F IN        FOLDERBROWSE  Hello world    F  GLW7 Distrib System Layouts  print display         DO  SET MyFolder   F  popd echo My selected folder   MyFolder    The result is then correct   My selected folder  F  GLW7 Distrib System OS install  recovery  VM  Press any key to continue         Of course in the above example  I assume that my batch script is located in the same folder as the one of my executable command so that I can use the    d0  p0  syntax  If this is not your case  then you have to find a way to locate your command path and change the default directory to its path   NB  For those who wonder  the sample command used here  to select a folder  is FOLDERBROWSE EXE  I found it on the web site f2ko de  http   f2ko de en cmd php    If anyone has a better solution for that kind of commands accessible through a complex path  I will be very glad to hear of it   Gilles

User · Answer

You can capture all output in one variable  but the lines will be separated by a character of your choice    in the example below  instead of an actual CR-LF    echo off setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion for  f  delims     i in   dir  b   do       if   DIR        set DIR   i  else  set DIR  DIR    i    echo directory contains  echo  DIR    Second version  if you need to print the contents out line-by-line   This takes advanted of the fact that there won t be duplicate lines of output from  dir  b   so it may not work in the general case    echo off setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion set count 0 for  f  delims     i in   dir  b   do       if   DIR        set DIR   i  else  set DIR  DIR    i      set  a count    count    1    echo directory contains  echo  DIR   for  l   c in  1 1  count   do       for  f  delims      i in    DIR    do           echo   i         set DIR  DIR   i

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echo off  ver   find  6 1    gt  nul if  ERRORLEVEL     0   echo Win7 for  f  delims     a in   DIR  C  Program Files Microsoft Office  Outlook EXE   B  P  S   do call set findoutlook   a  findoutlook     ver   find  5 1    gt  nul if  ERRORLEVEL     0   echo WinXP for  f  delims     a in   DIR  C  Program Files Microsoft Office  Outlook EXE   B  P  S   do call set findoutlook   a  findoutlook    echo Outlook dir    findoutlook    findoutlook

User · Answer

To get the current directory  you can use this   CD  gt  tmpFile SET  p myvar   lt  tmpFile DEL tmpFile echo test   myvar    It s using a temp-file though  so it s not the most pretty  but it certainly works   CD  puts the current directory in  tmpFile    SET  loads the content of tmpFile   Here is a solution for multiple lines with  array s     echo off  rem --------- rem Obtain line numbers from the file rem ---------  rem This is the file that is being read  You can replace this with  1 for dynamic behaviour or replace it with some command like the first example i gave with the  CD  command  set  readfile test txt  for  f  usebackq tokens 2 delims      a in   find  c  v      readfile    do set  max   a set  a  max  1 set  i 0 set  filename temp dat  rem --------- rem Make the list rem ---------   makeList find  n  v      readfile   gt   filename   rem --------- rem Read the list rem ---------   readList if   i     max  goto printList  rem --------- rem Read the lines into the array rem --------- for  f  usebackq delims   tokens 2    a in   findstr  r      i      filename    do set  data  i    a set  a  i  1 goto readList   printList del   filename  set  i 1  printMore if   i     max  goto finished set  data  i  set  a  i  1 goto printMore   finished   But you might want to consider moving to another more powerful shell or create an application for this stuff  It s stretching the possibilities of the batch files quite a bit

User · Answer

you need to use the SET command with parameter  P and direct your output to it  For example see http   www ss64 com nt set html  Will work for CMD  not sure about  BAT files  From a comment to this post      That link has the command  Set  P    MyVar  lt MyFilename txt  which says it will set  MyVar to the first line   from MyFilename txt  This could be   used as  myCmd  gt  tmp txt  with  set    P myVar  lt tmp txt   But it will only   get the first line of the output  not   all the output

User · Answer

You should use the for command  here is an example    echo off rem Commands go here exit  b  output for  f  tokens   useback    a in     1   do set  output   a    and you can use call  output  Command goes here  then the output will be in the  output  variable   Note  If you have a command output that is multiline  this tool will set the output to the last line of your multiline command

User · Answer

echo off setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion FOR  F  tokens 1 delims      i IN   echo hola   DO       set TXT   i   echo  TXT   TXT     the result is  TXT  hola

[windows] How do I get the result of a command in a variable in windows?

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