In Windows cmd, how do I prompt for user input and use the result in another command?

Question

I have a Windows .bat file which I would like to accept user input and then use the results of that input as part of the call to additional commands.

For example, I'd like to accept a process ID from the user, and then run jstack against that ID, putting the results of the jstack call into a file. However, when I try this, it doesn't work.

Here's my sample bat file contents:

@echo off
set /p id=Enter ID: 
echo %id%
jstack > jstack.txt

and here's what shows up in jstack.txt:

Enter ID: Terminate batch job (Y/N)? 

Answer 1

Try this:

@echo off
set /p id="Enter ID: "

You can then use %id% as a parameter to another batch file like jstack %id%.

For example:

set /P id=Enter id: 
jstack %id% > jstack.txt