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Mohammad AL-Rawabdeh
Asked: 2011-03-11 05:36:20 +0800 CST

Store output of Windows command in batch file

  • 772

I need to store the output of a command line in a variable. How can I do this?

windows command-line-interface batch-file

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Provided a simple batch file test.cmd with the contents:

    echo jscott

    You can set the output into a variable with the following command line:

    FOR /F "tokens=*" %a in ('test.cmd') do SET OUTPUT=%a

    Used on the command line like this:

    C:\>SET OUTPUT
Environment variable OUTPUT not defined
C:\>FOR /F "tokens=*" %a in ('test.cmd') do SET OUTPUT=%a
C:\>ECHO %OUTPUT%
jscott

    Should you want to use the FOR within a batch file, rather than command line, you need to change %a to %%a.

    • 19

  2. This is how I do this:

    vol c: > result.txt
set /p DATA=<result.txt
echo %DATA%
del result.txt

    If result.txt has more than 1 line, only the top line of the file is used for %DATA%. You could also make result.txt into a variable itself, such as %OUTPUT%.

    • 4

  3. You can pipe the command into something like:

    command > somefile

    What you see above sends the output to a named file. If file does not exist, it creates one. Overwrites existing file And you can also do this:

    command >> somefile

    This appends the output to contents of a named file or creates a file if none exists

    See also here: Using command redirection operators

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