Store output of Windows command in batch file

Question

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

Answer 1

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.

Answer 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%.

Answer 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