How do I get the result of a command in a variable in windows?

Question

I'm looking to get the result of a command as a variable in a Windows batch script (see how to get the result of a command in bash for the bash scripting equivalent). A solution that will work in a .bat file is preferred, but other common windows scripting solutions are also welcome.

Answer 1

The humble for command has accumulated some interesting capabilities over the years:

D:\> FOR /F "delims=" %i IN ('date /t') DO set today=%i
D:\> echo %today%
Sat 20/09/2008

Note that "delims=" overwrites the default space and tab delimiters so that the output of the date command gets gobbled all at once.

To capture multi-line output, it can still essentially be a one-liner (using the variable lf as the delimiter in the resulting variable):

REM NB:in a batch file, need to use %%i not %i
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
SET lf=-
FOR /F "delims=" %%i IN ('dir \ /b') DO if ("!out!"=="") (set out=%%i) else (set out=!out!%lf%%%i)
ECHO %out%

To capture a piped expression, use ^|:

FOR /F "delims=" %%i IN ('svn info . ^| findstr "Root:"') DO set "URL=%%i"