Question

how to pipe program output to variable

Asked by: scott

I have a vendor-supplied program called echoid.exe that takes a "silent" switch -s

This command correctly sends output to a text file
   echoid -s > myfile.txt

What I would like to do instead is set a variable to the output value. I'm sure my problem is lack of syntax knowledge. I've tried variations on this
   echoid -s | set var1=

Thanks in advance...

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Asked On
2009-09-22 at 15:21:38ID24753286
Tags

DOS

,

batch

,

pipe

,

piping

Topics

Windows Batch Scripting

,

MS DOS

Participating Experts
2
Points
350
Comments
9

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Answers

 

by: dragon-itPosted on 2009-09-22 at 15:41:23ID: 25398259

You can do it using either a for command or set /p:

echoit -s >file.txt & set /p var1=<file.txt

For some reason I've never been able to get it to work properly using a pipe.

or with for:

for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('echoit -s') do set var1=%%a

If the results have more than one line then var1 will end up the last line with the for and the first line with the set /p, though we can easily do processing with the for command to get whichever bit of the output is needed (some examples in for /? set /? etc.)

Steve

 

by: QlemoPosted on 2009-09-22 at 16:07:17ID: 25398488

To show the options of further processing: If there are several lines, we can accumulate them using a FOR like above, and skip the first one just for fun:

setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
for /f "skip=1 tokens=*" %%A in ('echoit -s') do set var1=!var1! %%A

 

by: QlemoPosted on 2009-09-22 at 16:38:21ID: 25398689

Yep, that's right, %% is used for FOR in batch only.

 

by: dragon-itPosted on 2009-09-22 at 16:48:09ID: 25398758

A little unfair there... did I not answer your question?

 

by: scottPosted on 2009-09-22 at 17:14:07ID: 25398934

dragon-it -- my mistake!! I realized the mistake as I was driving into town to pick up my daughter from school. I've asked a moderator to reopen the question so I can reapply the points.

 

by: scottPosted on 2009-09-22 at 18:59:36ID: 25399490

increasing points....

 

by: scottPosted on 2009-09-22 at 19:00:09ID: 31632232

Very cool! It is, in fact, the second line of two in the output that I want so your second option did the trick.

Thanks

BTW, to run this from the command line I had to change %%a to %a; I assume the double %% are for use in a batch file?

 

by: dragon-itPosted on 2009-09-22 at 22:26:18ID: 25400213

Thanks Scott, appreciated!

Steve

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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