I want to run two commands in a Windows CMD console.
In Linux I would do it like this
touch thisfile ; ls -lstrh
How is it done on Windows?
Like this on all Microsoft OSes since 2000, and still good today:
dir & echo foo
If you want the second command to execute only if the first exited successfully:
dir && echo foo
The single ampersand (&) syntax to execute multiple commands on one line goes back to Windows XP, Windows 2000, and some earlier NT versions. (4.0 at least, according to one commenter here.)
There are quite a few other points about this that you'll find scrolling down this page.
Historical data follows, for those who may find it educational.
Prior to that, the && syntax was only a feature of the shell replacement 4DOS before that feature was added to the Microsoft command interpreter.
In Windows 95, 98 and ME, you'd use the pipe character instead:
dir | echo foo
In MS-DOS 5.0 and later, through some earlier Windows and NT versions of the command interpreter, the (undocumented) command separator was character 20 (Ctrl+T) which I'll represent with ^T here.
dir ^T echo foo
A quote from the documentation:
Source: Microsoft, Windows XP Professional Product Documentation, Command shell overview
Also: An A-Z Index of Windows CMD commands
Using multiple commands and conditional processing symbols
You can run multiple commands from a single command line or script using conditional processing symbols. When you run multiple commands with conditional processing symbols, the commands to the right of the conditional processing symbol act based upon the results of the command to the left of the conditional processing symbol.
For example, you might want to run a command only if the previous command fails. Or, you might want to run a command only if the previous command is successful.
You can use the special characters listed in the following table to pass multiple commands.
& [...]
command1 & command2
Use to separate multiple commands on one command line. Cmd.exe runs the first command, and then the second command.
&& [...]
command1 && command2
Use to run the command following && only if the command preceding the symbol is successful. Cmd.exe runs the first command, and then runs the second command only if the first command completed successfully.
|| [...]
command1 || command2
Use to run the command following || only if the command preceding || fails. Cmd.exe runs the first command, and then runs the second command only if the first command did not complete successfully (receives an error code greater than zero).
( ) [...]
(command1 & command2)
Use to group or nest multiple commands.
; or ,
command1 parameter1;parameter2
Use to separate command parameters.
& is the Bash equivalent for ; ( run commands) and && is the Bash equivalent of && (run commands only when the previous has not caused an error).
If you want to create a cmd shortcut (for example on your desktop) add /k parameter (/k means keep, /c will close window):
cmd /k echo hello && cd c:\ && cd Windows
You can use & to run commands one after another. Example: c:\dir & vim myFile.txt
You can use call to overcome the problem of environment variables being evaluated too soon - e.g.
set A=Hello & call echo %A%
A number of processing symbols can be used when running several commands on the same line, and may lead to processing redirection in some cases, altering output in other case, or just fail. One important case is placing on the same line commands that manipulate variables.
#echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
set count=0
set "count=1" & echo %count% !count!
0 1
As you see in the above example, when commands using variables are placed on the same line, you must use delayed expansion to update your variable values. If your variable is indexed, use CALL command with %% modifiers to update its value on the same line:
set "i=5" & set "arg!i!=MyFile!i!" & call echo path!i!=%temp%\%%arg!i!%%
path5=C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Temp\MyFile5
cmd /c ipconfig /all & Output.txt
This command execute command and open Output.txt file in a single command
So, I was trying to enable the specific task of running RegAsm (register assembly) from a context menu. The issue I had was that the result would flash up and go away before I could read it. So I tried piping to Pause, which does not work when the command fails (as mentioned here Pause command not working in .bat script and here Batch file command PAUSE does not work). So I tried cmd /k but that leaves the window open for more commands (I just want to read the result). So I added a pause followed by exit to the chain, resulting in the following:
cmd /k C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\regasm.exe "%1" /codebase \"%1\" & pause & exit
This works like a charm -- RegAsm runs on the file and shows its results, then a "Press any key to continue..." prompt is shown, then the command prompt window closes when a key is pressed.
P.S. For others who might be interested, you can use the following .reg file entries to add a dllfile association to .dll files and then a RegAsm command extension to that (notice the escaped quotes and backslashes):
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.dll]
"Content Type"="application/x-msdownload"
#="dllfile"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile]
#="Application Extension"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\Shell\RegAsm]
#="Register Assembly"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\dllfile\Shell\RegAsm\command]
#="cmd /k C:\\Windows\\Microsoft.NET\\Framework\\v4.0.30319\\regasm.exe \"%1\" /codebase \"%1\" & pause & exit"
Now I have a nice right-click menu to register an assembly.
In windows, I used all the above solutions &, && but nothing worked
Finally ';' symbol worked for me
npm install; npm start
Well, you have two options: Piping, or just &:
DIR /S & START FILE.TXT
Or,
tasklist | find "notepad.exe"
Piping (|) is more for taking the output of one command, and putting it into another. And (&) is just saying run this, and that.
In order to execute two commands at the same time, you must put an & (ampersand) symbol between the two commands. Like so:
color 0a & start chrome.exe
Cheers!
I try to have two pings in the same window, and it is a serial command on the same line. After finishing the first, run the second command.
The solution was to combine with start /b on a Windows 7 command prompt.
Start as usual, without /b, and launch in a separate window.
The command used to launch in the same line is:
start /b command1 parameters & command2 parameters
Any way, if you wish to parse the output, I don't recommend to use this.
I noticed the output is scrambled between the output of the commands.
Use & symbol in windows to use command in one line
C:\Users\Arshdeep Singh>cd Desktop\PROJECTS\PYTHON\programiz & jupyter notebook
like in linux
we use,
touch thisfile ; ls -lstrh
I was trying to create batch file to start elevated cmd and to make it run 2 separate commands.
When I used & or && characters, I got a problem. For instance, this is the text in my batch file:
powershell.exe -Command "Start-Process cmd \"/k echo hello && call cd C:\ \" -Verb RunAs"
I get parse error:
After several guesses I found out, that if you surround && with quotes like "&&" it works:
powershell.exe -Command "Start-Process cmd \"/k echo hello "&&" call cd C:\ \" -Verb RunAs"
And here's the result:
May be this'll help someone :)
No, cd / && tree && echo %time%. The time echoed is at when the first command is executed.
The piping has some issue, but it is not critical as long as people know how it works.
One more example: For example, when we use the gulp build system, instead of
gulp - default > build
gulp build - build build-folder
gulp watch - start file-watch
gulp dist - build dist-folder
We can do that with one line:
cd c:\xampp\htdocs\project & gulp & gulp watch
Yes there is. It's &.
&& will execute command 2 when command 1 is complete providing it didn't fail.
& will execute regardless.
With windows 10 you can also use scriptrunner:
ScriptRunner.exe -appvscript demoA.cmd arg1 arg2 -appvscriptrunnerparameters -wait -timeout=30 -rollbackonerror -appvscript demoB.ps1 arg3 arg4 -appvscriptrunnerparameters -wait -timeout=30 -rollbackonerror
it allows you to start few commands on one line you want you can run them consecutive or without waiting each other, you can put timeouts and rollback on error.
Try to create a .bat ot .cmd file with those lines using doskey key and $T which is equivalent to & to do several command line in just one line :
touch=echo off $T echo. ^> $* $T dir /B $T echo on
It'll create an empty file.
Example:
touch myfile
In cmd you'll get something like this:
But as mentioned previously by others, it is really advised to use & operator to do many command line in one line from CMD prompt.
Enjoy =)
When you try to use or manipulate variables in one line beware of their content! E.g. a variable like the following
PATH=C:\Program Files (x86)\somewhere;"C:\Company\Cool Tool";%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps;
may lead to a lot of unhand-able trouble if you use it as %PATH%
The closing parentheses terminate your group statement
The double quotes don't allow you to use %PATH% to handle the parentheses problem
And what will a referenced variable like %USERPROFILE% contain?
It's simple: just differentiate them with && signs.
Example:
echo "Hello World" && echo "GoodBye World".
"Goodbye World" will be printed after "Hello World".
I would like to run a php script in the background as it takes much time and I don't want to wait for it.
This question relates to:
php execute a background process
I tried to make this work on my linux centos machine, but unfortunately it seems not to be working.
This is my code:
$cmd = 'php '.realpath($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]).'/test/sample.php';
exec(sprintf("%s > %s 2>&1 & echo $! >> %s", $cmd, $outputfile, $pidfile));
exec(sprintf("$s > $s 2>&1 & echo $1", $cmd, $outputfile),$pidArr);
sleep(2);
print_r($outputfile);
print_r($pidfile);
I included the sleep(2) to make sure the sample.php script is finished. The sample.php only contains echo 'Hello world'; I tried both exec options, but none of them worked. The above script doesn't show any output.
I tried to run the same $cmd in linux command line and it showed me the output from sample.php script.
I would like to make this run first, but in addition I would like to send variables to the sample.php script as well.
Your help is very appreciated.
You can use set_time_limit(0) to allow script to run indefinitely and ignore_user_abort() to keep running script in background, even if the browser of tab have been closed. This way if you redirect your browser to somewhere else, script will keep running in background.
This approach to running php scripts in the background seems a bit awkward. And depending on if you pass additional parameters based on user input, could also create a scenario where an attacker could inject additional commands.
For use cases like this, you could be using cron, if you don't need a response immediately, or a job manager like Gearman, where you can use a Gearman server to manage the communication between the we request and the background job.
I made some adjustments
$cmd = 'php '.realpath($_SERVER["DOCUMENT_ROOT"]).'/test/sample.php';
$outputfile = 'ouput.txt';
$pidfile = 'pid.txt';
exec(sprintf("%s > %s 2>&1 & echo $! >> %s", $cmd, $outputfile, $pidfile));
exec(sprintf("$s > $s 2>&1 & echo $1", $cmd, $outputfile),$pidArr);
sleep(2);
print_r(file_get_contents($outputfile));
print_r(file_get_contents($pidfile));
Not sure if you defined the variables before. I tested it on Windows and it works
I have to design a interface using PHP for a software written in python. Currently this software is used from command line by passing input, mostly the input is a text file. There are series of steps and for every step a python script is called. Every step takes a text file as input and an generates an output text file in the folder decided by the user. I am using system() of php but I can't see the output but when I use the same command from command line it generates the output. Example of command :
python /software/qiime-1.4.0-release/bin/check_id_map.py -m /home/qiime/sample/Fasting_Map.txt -o /home/qiime/sample/mapping_output -v
try this
$script = 'software/qiime-1.4.0-release/bin/check_id_map.py -m /home/qiime/sample/Fasting_Map.txt -o /home/qiime/sample/mapping_output -v';
$a = exec($script);
If you are not on windows, have you tried adding 2>&1 (redirect stderr to stdout) to the end of the command?
$output = system("python /software/qiime-1.4.0-release/bin/check_id_map.py -m /home/qiime/sample/Fasting_Map.txt -o /home/qiime/sample/mapping_output -v 2>&1", $exitcode);
Found from http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.system.php#108713
Also the doc says that it
Returns the last line of the command output on success, and FALSE on
failure.
So if you are trying to get multiple lines, you may need to redirect it to a file and read that in.
instead of system() try surrounding the code in `ticks`...
It has a similar functionality but behaves a little differently in the way it returns the output..
I want to run wget as follows
shell_exec('wget "'http://somedomain.com/somefile.mp4'"');
sleep(20);
continue my code...
What I want is to let PHP wait for the shell_exec wget file download to finish before continuing on with the rest of the code. I don't want to wait a set number of seconds.
How do I do this, because as I run shell_exec wget, the file will start downloading and run in background and PHP will continue.
Does your URL contain the & character? If so, your wget might be going into the background and shell_exec() might be returning right away.
For example, if $url is "http://www.example.com/?foo=1&bar=2", you would need to make sure that it is single-quoted when passed on a command line:
shell_exec("wget '$url'");
Otherwise the shell would misinterpret the &.
Escaping command line parameters is a good idea in general. The most comprehensive way to do this is with escapeshellarg():
shell_exec("wget ".escapeshellarg($url));
shell_exec does wait for the command to finish - so you don't need the sleep command at all:
<?php
shell_exec("sleep 10");
?>
# time php c.php
10.14s real 0.05s user 0.07s system
I think your problem is likely the quotes on this line:
shell_exec('wget "'http://somedomain.com/somefile.mp4'"');
it should be
shell_exec("wget 'http://somedomain.com/somefile.mp4'");
I'm writing a class who let me access to recutils through PHP.
I have a 'database' file called books.rec in ../database/ and a script who runs my Recutils.php class.
My class simply launch system application with correct parameters.
But When I try to use recins with PHP's exec function, the command doesn't work will it work in command line.
This is the command that is executed by my script :
recins -f Title -v "Moi" -f Author -v "Moche" -f Location -v "loaned" -t Books ../database/books.rec
With PHP : Nothing, the record is not inserted (no error message at all too).
In terminal : OK, the command is well done and my record is inserted.
I also have a method to do a select operation using recsel and it works very well, will it use exactly the same file (and runs from exec too).
So, could someone explain me why the command don't work will another with the same file work ?
Thanks
PS : Further informations : http://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/
I would double check that you are running the command as the same user from the command line and your php script. That may be the problem. exec('whoami')
You said you had a script that starts your php script it should be the same user as that.
You might also want to running a simpler exec command to see if that will work first.
Other things to try:
Try checking stderr output exec('ls /tmp 2>&1', $out); This will redirect standard error to standard out so you get both.
Try using php's shell_exec() which will invoke a shell just like when you are running from the command line(eg. bash). shell_exec('ls /tmp 2>&1 >> /tmp/log') should even put all output into a log file.
I don't think this will help you but it is something to try if all else fails, set it as a background process and see if it completes. exec('nohup php process.php > process.out 2> process.err < /dev/null &'). The & will set the command to run in the background and let the script continue.
Good Luck
Is recins command accessible for PHP ? Also is path to books.rec correct ?
Try with absolute path.