I have a batch file that's calling the same executable over and over with different parameters. How do I make it terminate immediately if one of the calls returns an error code of any level?
Basically, I want the equivalent of MSBuild's ContinueOnError=false.
Check the errorlevel in an if statement, and then exit /b (exit the batch file only, not the entire cmd.exe process) for values other than 0.
same-executable-over-and-over.exe /with different "parameters" if %errorlevel% neq 0 exit /b %errorlevel% If you want the value of the errorlevel to propagate outside of your batch file
if %errorlevel% neq 0 exit /b %errorlevel% but if this is inside a for it gets a bit tricky. You'll need something more like:
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion for %%f in (C:\Windows\*) do ( same-executable-over-and-over.exe /with different "parameters" if !errorlevel! neq 0 exit /b !errorlevel! ) Edit: You have to check the error after each command. There's no global "on error goto" type of construct in cmd.exe/command.com batch. I've also updated my code per CodeMonkey, although I've never encountered a negative errorlevel in any of my batch-hacking on XP or Vista.
neq) enabled/disabled does not matter on using if not errorlevel 1 exit /B as explained by Microsoft in support article Using command redirection operators and in help output on running if /? in a cmd window. The current errorlevel (exit code) is kept on exiting processing of batch file with exit /B. Note: exit with parameter /B requires enabled command extensions, see Where does GOTO :EOF return to?Add || goto :label to each line, and then define a :label.
For example, create this .cmd file:
@echo off echo Starting very complicated batch file... ping -invalid-arg || goto :error echo OH noes, this shouldn't have succeeded. goto :EOF :error echo Failed with error #%errorlevel%. exit /b %errorlevel% 
command || (SET ErrorLine=102 && goto :error)
|| was created for in the first place. Maybe not goto in particular, but "try, do this on error" as Fowl mentioned. My question is does this work for all non-zero exit codes? Positives only?cmd /k exit -1 && echo success || echo fail - prints fail.
command || exit /b %errorlevel%The shortest:
command || exit /b If you need, you can set the exit code:
command || exit /b 666 And you can also log:
command || echo ERROR && exit /b 
%ERRORLEVEL% is untouched when you call exit /b, so the error code is forwarded
command is calling some Python script which exits (python -u fail.py, fail.py is sys.exit(1)), then using || exit /b always gives me zero! Maybe it's specific of Python error codes, I don't know, but straightforward handling with if %errorlevel% neq 0 afterwards works perfectly. So be aware!
py -u fail.py || exit /b the %errorlevel% is set to 1, with py -u fail.py || exit /b 666 it's set to 666.Here is a polyglot program for BASH and Windows CMD that runs a series of commands and quits out if any of them fail:
#!/bin/bash 2> nul :; set -o errexit :; function goto() { return $?; } command 1 || goto :error command 2 || goto :error command 3 || goto :error :; exit 0 exit /b 0 :error exit /b %errorlevel% I have used this type of thing in the past for a multiple platform continuous integration script.
One minor update, you should change the checks for "if errorlevel 1" to the following...
IF %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 This is because on XP you can get negative numbers as errors. 0 = no problems, anything else is a problem.
And keep in mind the way that DOS handles the "IF ERRORLEVEL" tests. It will return true if the number you are checking for is that number or higher so if you are looking for specific error numbers you need to start with 255 and work down.
I prefer the OR form of command, as I find them the most readable (as opposed to having an if after each command). However, the naive way of doing this, command || exit /b %ERRORLEVEL% is wrong.
This is because batch expands variables when a line is first read, rather than when they are being used. This means that if the command in the line above fails, the batch file exits properly, but it exits with return code 0, because that is what the value of %ERRORLEVEL% was at the start of the line. Obviously, this is undesirable in our script, so we have to enable delayed expansion, like so:
SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion command-1 || exit /b !ERRORLEVEL! command-2 || exit /b !ERRORLEVEL! command-3 || exit /b !ERRORLEVEL! command-4 || exit /b !ERRORLEVEL! This snippet will execute commands 1-4, and if any of them fails, it will exit with the same exit code as the failing command did.
exit /b with no argument will preserve the errorlevel. Your example could be simplified to command-1 || exit /b -- shorter and no longer requires EnableDelayedExpansion. However, your code does demonstrate valid use of EnableDelayedExpansion, which someone might build upon, for example: command-1 || (echo Error=!errorlevel! && exit /b).
We cannot always depend on ERRORLEVEL, because many times external programs or batch scripts do not return exit codes.
In that case we can use generic checks for failures like this:
IF EXIST %outfile% (DEL /F %outfile%) CALL some_script.bat -o %outfile% IF NOT EXIST %outfile% (ECHO ERROR & EXIT /b) And if the program outputs something to console, we can check it also.
some_program.exe 2>&1 | FIND "error message here" && (ECHO ERROR & EXIT /b) some_program.exe 2>&1 | FIND "Done processing." || (ECHO ERROR & EXIT /b) No matter how I tried, the errorlevel always stays 0 even when msbuild failed. So I built my workaround:
Build Project and save log to Build.log
SET Build_Opt=/flp:summary;logfile=Build.log;append=true msbuild "myproj.csproj" /t:rebuild /p:Configuration=release /fl %Build_Opt% search for "0 Error" string in build log, set the result to var
FOR /F "tokens=* USEBACKQ" %%F IN (`find /c /i "0 Error" Build.log`) DO ( SET var=%%F ) echo %var% get the last character, which indicates how many lines contains the search string
set result=%var:~-1% echo "%result%" if string not found, then error > 0, build failed
if "%result%"=="0" ( echo "build failed" ) That solution was inspired by Mechaflash's post at How to set commands output as a variable in a batch file
for /f %%F in ('type build.log^|find /c /i "0 Error") do set result=%%F. Note: find "0 Error" will also find 10 Errors.@echo off set startbuild=%TIME% C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\msbuild.exe c:\link.xml /flp1:logfile=c:\link\errors.log;errorsonly /flp2:logfile=c:\link\warnings.log;warningsonly || goto :error copy c:\app_offline.htm "\\lawpccnweb01\d$\websites\OperationsLinkWeb\app_offline.htm" del \\lawpccnweb01\d$\websites\OperationsLinkWeb\bin\ /Q echo Start Copy: %TIME% set copystart=%TIME% xcopy C:\link\_PublishedWebsites\OperationsLink \\lawpccnweb01\d$\websites\OperationsLinkWeb\ /s /y /d del \\lawpccnweb01\d$\websites\OperationsLinkWeb\app_offline.htm echo Started Build: %startbuild% echo Started Copy: %copystart% echo Finished Copy: %TIME% c:\link\warnings.log :error c:\link\errors.log 
