DOS: find a string, if found then run another script

batch-file dos
Manjot picture Manjot · Jan 6, 2010 · Viewed 109.5k times · Source

I want to find a string in a file using DOS:

For example

find "string" status.txt

And when it is found, I want to run a batch file.

What is the best way to do this?

Answer

jason picture jason · Jan 6, 2010

It's been awhile since I've done anything with batch files but I think that the following works:

find /c "string" file
if %errorlevel% equ 1 goto notfound
echo found
goto done
:notfound
echo notfound
goto done
:done

This is really a proof of concept; clean up as it suits your needs. The key is that find returns an errorlevel of 1 if string is not in file. We branch to notfound in this case otherwise we handle the found case.

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