I want the bat file to take this text \Music\TheArchive\Aeph & Neonlight\Aeph & Neonlight - Space Truckers - 7b - 173.26.mp3 and write it into a new row in the existing text file baseplaylist.m3u
So far I have this:
set "texty=\Music\TheArchive\Aeph & Neonlight\Aeph & Neonlight - Space Truckers - 7b - 173.26.mp3"
echo %texty% >>C:\Music\Playlists\baseplaylist.m3u
but it does not work. I know the issue is due to the characters in the text that I am trying to copy, but I don't know how to overcome this.
Backslash has nothing to do with your problem. Nor is there a problem with your assignment of the variable. :-)
Your problem is the & character - it is the compound command operator that allows you to run multiple commands on the same line of input. You want the & to be a literal, but it is being treated as an operator when you try to ECHO it. For example, echo this&echo that prints 2 lines of output to the screen: "this" followed by "that".
A batch line must be parsed before it can be executed. The parser must identify commands and operators. The expansion of %texty% occurs before the commands and operators are parsed, so the parser thinks the next token after & is a command.
There are many special characters that can cause similar issues: | > < ) & ^.
There are two ways to force the batch parser to treat a special character as a literal: 1) enclose it in quotes, or 2) escape it with ^.
echo this&echo that
echo "this & that"
echo this ^& that
results:
this
that
"this & that"
this & that
In your SET statement you have the entire assignment enclosed in quotes, so it is properly treated as a literal. You can prove it to yourself by putting the command set texty after your set assignment - it will print the current value of texty to the screen and you can see that it is your desired value.
But when you echo the value it is no longer quoted, so the parser treats the & as an operator and you have your failure.
You could echo "%texty", but then you would get quotes in your output.
You could change the definition of texty to include the escape character.
set "texty=\Music\TheArchive\Aeph ^& Neonlight\Aeph ^& Neonlight - Space Truckers - 7b - 173.26.mp3"
But that is a pain. Thankfully there is a simple solution - delayed expansion of a variable occurs after the commands and operators have been parsed, so you no longer have to worry about special characters.
Delayed expansion must be enabled before it can be used using setlocal enableDelayedExpansion. Then you enclose the variable name in exclamation points instead of percents.
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set "texty=\Music\TheArchive\Aeph & Neonlight\Aeph & Neonlight - Space Truckers - 7b - 173.26.mp3"
echo !texty! >>C:\Music\Playlists\baseplaylist.m3u
Now the line is parsed for commands and operators before !texty! is expanded. So ECHO properly prints the literal value of texty.
The problem is the operator &, in that cases you will need to expand the variable or scape the operator or enclosing the "echo" string with another double-quotes... But the solution in your case is so simple:
set "texty=\Music\TheArchive\Aeph & Neonlight\Aeph & Neonlight - Space Truckers - 7b - 173.26.mp3"
<nul Set /P "string=%TEXTY%" >>C:\Music\Playlists\baseplaylist.m3u
PS: Using SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION is a bad practice when you are playing with filenames (especially when they contain the character ! ) so try to never use the expansion, all can be done without expanding vars (ALL), enabling delayedexpansion is the easy and bad way to done the tmost things, but not the only way.
I hope this helped you.
This question already has answers here:
How can I echo a newline in a batch file?
(24 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
Is it possible to put a new line character in an echo line in a batch file?
Basically I want to be able to do the equivalent of:
echo Hello\nWorld
You can do this easily enough in Linux, but I can't work out how to do it in Windows.
echo. prints an empty line.
Example:
echo Hello
echo.
echo world
prints
Hello
world
It can be solved with a single echo.
You need a newline character \n for this.
There are multiple ways to get a new line into the echo
1) This sample use the multiline caret to add a newline into the command,
the empty line is required
echo Hello^
world
2) The next solution creates first a variable which contains one single line feed character.
set \n=^
rem ** Two empty lines are required
Or create the new line with a slightly modified version
(set \n=^
%=DONT REMOVE THIS=%
)
And use this character with delayed expansion
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
echo Hello!\n!world
To use a line feed character with the percent expansion you need to create a more complex sequence
echo Hello^%\n%%\n%world
Or you can use the New line hack
REM Creating a Newline variable (the two blank lines are required!)
set \n=^
set NL=^^^%\n%%\n%^%\n%%\n%
REM Example Usage:
echo There should be a newline%NL%inserted here.
But only the delayed expansion of the newline works reliable, also inside of quotes.
After a little experimentation I discovered that it is possible to do it without issuing two separate echo commands as described in How can you echo a newline in batch files?. However to make it work you will need a text editor that does not translate CR to CR+LF.
Type:
#echo First Line
then with NumLock on, hold down the ALT key and type 10 on the numeric keypad before releasing ALT (you must use the numeric keypad, not the top-row number keys). This will insert a CR character. Then type the second line. Depending on your editor and how it handles CR compared with CR+LF you may get:
#echo First Line◙Second Line
or
#echo First Line
Second Line
This works from the command line and will work in a batch file so long as the text editor does not translate CR to CR+LF (which Windows/DOS editors do unless you configure them not to). If the CR is converted to CR+LF, or if you use just LF, the second line is interpreted as a new command.
However, I cannot see why this would be preferable over simply:
#echo First Line
#echo Second Line
Ahaha,
I think I've worked out something close enough...
echo hello&echo.&echo world
Produces:
hello
world
echo.
or
echo(
will do the blank new line. Hope this is helpful.
I found this very informative, so wanted to post a better example using the answers provided
This provides a nicely formatted usage message
if "%1" == """" goto usage
:usage
echo USAGE: %0 [Set properties using -D flag] [Ant Task to Run] &
echo. &
echo Availble Command line properties &
echo -------------------------------- &
...
I think it is not possible. You could only try an ascii-character to this:
http://www.asciitable.com/
But this will perhaps crash your batch-file.
How can you you insert a newline from your batch file output?
I want to do something like:
echo hello\nworld
Which would output:
hello
world
Use:
echo hello
echo:
echo world
echo hello & echo.world
This means you could define & echo. as a constant for a newline \n.
Here you go, create a .bat file with the following in it :
#echo off
REM Creating a Newline variable (the two blank lines are required!)
set NLM=^
set NL=^^^%NLM%%NLM%^%NLM%%NLM%
REM Example Usage:
echo There should be a newline%NL%inserted here.
echo.
pause
You should see output like the following:
There should be a newline
inserted here.
Press any key to continue . . .
You only need the code between the REM statements, obviously.
There is a standard feature echo: in cmd/bat-files to write blank line, which emulates a new line in your cmd-output:
#echo off
echo line1
echo:
echo line2
or
#echo line1 & echo: & echo line2
Output of cited above cmd-file:
line1
line2
Like the answer of Ken, but with the use of the delayed expansion.
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
(set \n=^
%=Do not remove this line=%
)
echo Line1!\n!Line2
echo Works also with quotes "!\n!line2"
First a single linefeed character is created and assigned to the \n-variable.
This works as the caret at the line end tries to escape the next character, but if this is a Linefeed it is ignored and the next character is read and escaped (even if this is also a linefeed).
Then you need a third linefeed to end the current instruction, else the third line would be appended to the LF-variable.
Even batch files have line endings with CR/LF only the LF are important, as the CR's are removed in this phase of the parser.
The advantage of using the delayed expansion is, that there is no special character handling at all.
echo Line1%LF%Line2 would fail, as the parser stops parsing at single linefeeds.
More explanations are at
SO:Long commands split over multiple lines in Vista/DOS batch (.bat) file
SO:How does the Windows Command Interpreter (CMD.EXE) parse scripts?
Edit: Avoid echo.
This doesn't answer the question, as the question was about single echo that can output multiple lines.
But despite the other answers who suggests the use of echo. to create a new line, it should be noted that echo. is the worst, as it's very slow and it can completly fail, as cmd.exe searches for a file named ECHO and try to start it.
For printing just an empty line, you could use one of
echo,
echo;
echo(
echo/
echo+
echo=
But the use of echo., echo\ or echo: should be avoided, as they can be really slow, depending of the location where the script will be executed, like a network drive.
echo. Enough said.
If you need it in a single line, use the &. For example,
echo Line 1 & echo. & echo line 3
would output as:
Line 1
line 3
Now, say you want something a bit fancier, ...
set n=^&echo.
echo hello %n% world
Outputs
hello
world
Then just throw in a %n% whenever you want a new line in an echo statement. This is more close to your \n used in various languages.
Breakdown
set n= sets the variable n equal to:
^ Nulls out the next symbol to follow:
& Means to do another command on the same line. We don't care about errorlevel(its an echo statement for crying out loud), so no && is needed.
echo. Continues the echo statement.
All of this works because you can actually create variables that are code, and use them inside of other commands. It is sort of like a ghetto function, since batch is not exactly the most advanced of shell scripting languages. This only works because batch's poor usage of variables, not designating between ints, chars, floats, strings, etc naturally.
If you are crafty, you could get this to work with other things. For example, using it to echo a tab
set t=^&echo. ::there are spaces up to the double colon
When echoing something to redirect to a file, multiple echo commands will not work. I think maybe the ">>" redirector is a good choice:
echo hello > temp
echo world >> temp
If you need to put results to a file, you can use:
(echo a & echo: & echo b) > file_containing_multiple_lines.txt
Just like Grimtron suggests - here is a quick example to define it:
#echo off
set newline=^& echo.
echo hello %newline%world
Output
C:\>test.bat
hello
world
You can also do like this,
(for %i in (a b "c d") do #echo %~i)
The output will be,
a
b
c d
Note that when this is put in a batch file, '%' shall be doubled.
(for %%i in (a b "c d") do #echo %%~i)
If anybody comes here because they are looking to echo a blank line from a MINGW make makefile, I used
#cmd /c echo.
simply using echo. causes the dreaded process_begin: CreateProcess(NULL, echo., ...) failed. error message.
I hope this helps at least one other person out there :)
Ken and Jeb solutions works well.
But the new lines are generated with only an LF character and I need CRLF characters (Windows version).
To this, at the end of the script, I have converted LF to CRLF.
Example:
TYPE file.txt | FIND "" /V > file_win.txt
del file.txt
rename file_win.txt file.txt
If one needs to use famous \n in string literals that can be passed to a variable, may write a code like in the Hello.bat script below:
#echo off
set input=%1
if defined input (
set answer=Hi!\nWhy did you call me a %input%?
) else (
set answer=Hi!\nHow are you?\nWe are friends, you know?\nYou can call me by name.
)
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set newline=^
rem Two empty lines above are essential
echo %answer:\n=!newline!%
This way multiline output may by prepared in one place, even in other scritpt or external file, and printed in another.
The line break is held in newline variable. Its value must be substituted after the echo line is expanded so I use setlocal enableDelayedExpansion to enable exclamation signs which expand variables on execution. And the execution substitutes \n with newline contents (look for syntax at help set). We could of course use !newline! while setting the answer but \n is more convenient. It may be passed from outside (try Hello R2\nD2), where nobody knows the name of variable holding the line break (Yes, Hello C3!newline!P0 works the same way).
Above example may be refined to a subroutine or standalone batch, used like call:mlecho Hi\nI'm your comuter:
:mlecho
setlocal enableDelayedExpansion
set text=%*
set nl=^
echo %text:\n=!nl!%
goto:eof
Please note, that additional backslash won't prevent the script from parsing \n substring.
After a sleepless night and after reading all answers herein, after reading a lot of SS64 > CMD and after a lot of try & error I found:
The (almost) Ultimate Solution
TL;DR
... for early adopters.
Important!
Use a text editor for C&P that supports Unicode, e.g. Notepad++!
Set Newline Environment Variable ...
... in the Current CMD Session
Important!
Do not edit anything between '=' and '^'! (There's a character in between though you don't see it. Neither here nor in edit mode. C&P works here.)
:: Sets newline variables in the current CMD session
set \n=^&echo:
set nl=^&echo:
... for the Current User
Important!
Do not edit anything between (the second) '␣' and '^'! (There's a character in between though you don't see it. Neither here nor in edit mode. C&P works here.)
:: Sets newline variables for the current user [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Environment]
setx \n ^&echo:
setx nl ^&echo:
... for the Local Machine
Important!
Do not edit anything between (the second) '␣' and '^'! (There's a character in between though you don't see it. Neither here nor in edit mode. C&P works here.)
:: Sets newline variables for the local machine [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment]
setx \n ^&echo: /m
setx nl ^&echo: /m
Why just almost?
It does not work with double-quotes that are not paired (opened and closed) in the same printed line, except if the only unpaired double-quote is the last character of the text, e.g.:
works: ""echo %\n%...after "newline". Before "newline"...%\n%...after "newline" (paired in each printed line)
works: echo %\n%...after newline. Before newline...%\n%...after newline" (the only unpaired double-quote is the last character)
doesn't work: echo "%\n%...after newline. Before newline...%\n%...after newline" (double-quotes are not paired in the same printed line)
Workaround for completely double-quoted texts (inspired by Windows batch: echo without new line):
set BEGIN_QUOTE=echo ^| set /p !="""
...
%BEGIN_QUOTE%
echo %\n%...after newline. Before newline...%\n%...after newline"
It works with completely single-quoted texts like:
echo '%\n%...after newline. Before newline...%\n%...after newline'
Added value: Escape Character
Note
There's a character after the '=' but you don't see it here but in edit mode. C&P works here.
:: Escape character - useful for color codes when 'echo'ing
:: See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/console/console-virtual-terminal-sequences#text-formatting
set ESC=
For the colors see also https://imgur.com/a/EuNXEar and https://gist.github.com/gerib/f2562474e7ca0d3cda600366ee4b8a45.
2nd added value: Getting Unicode characters easily
A great page for getting 87,461 Unicode characters (AToW) by keyword(s): https://www.amp-what.com/.
The Reasons
The version in Ken's answer works apparently (I didn't try it), but is somehow...well...you see:
set NLM=^
set NL=^^^%NLM%%NLM%^%NLM%%NLM%
The version derived from user2605194's and user287293's answer (without anything between '=' and '^'):
set nl=^&echo:
set \n=^&echo:
works partly but fails with the variable at the beginning of the line to be echoed:
> echo %\n%Hello%\n%World!
echo & echo:Hello & echo:World!
echo is ON.
Hello
World
due to the blank argument to the first echo.
All others are more or less invoking three echos explicitely.
I like short one-liners.
The Story Behind
To prevent set \n=^&echo: suggested in answers herein echoing blank (and such printing its status) I first remembered the Alt+255 user from the times when Novell was a widely used network and code pages like 437 and 850 were used. But 0d255/0xFF is ›Ÿ‹ (Latin Small Letter Y with diaeresis) in Unicode nowadays.
Then I remembered that there are more spaces in Unicode than the ordinary 0d32/0x20 but all of them are considered whitespaces and lead to the same behaviour as ›␣‹.
But there are even more: the zero width spaces and joiners which are not considered as whitespaces. The problem with them is, that you cannot C&P them since with their zero width there's nothing to select. So, I copied one that is close to one of them, the hair space (U+200A) which is right before the zero width space (U+200B) into Notepad++, opened its Hex-Editor plugin, found its bit representation E2 80 8A and changed it to E2 80 8B. Success! I had a non-whitespace character that's not visible in my \n environment variable.
To start a new line in batch, all you have to do is add "echo[", like so:
echo Hi!
echo[
echo Hello!
why not use substring/replace space to echo;?
set "_line=hello world"
echo\%_line: =&echo;%
Results:
hello
world
Or, replace \n to echo;
set "_line=hello\nworld"
echo\%_line:\n=&echo;%
For windows 10 with virtual terminal sequences there exists the means control the cursor position to a high degree.
To define the escape sequence 0x1b, the following can be used:
#Echo off
For /f %%a in ('echo prompt $E^| cmd')Do set \E=%%a
To output a single newline Between Strings:
<nul set /p "=Hello%\E%[EWorld"
To output n newlines where n is replaced with an integer:
<nul set /p "=%\E%[nE"
Many
Please note that all solutions that use cursor positioning according to Console Virtual Terminal Sequences, Cursor Positioning with:
Sequence
Code
Description
Behaviour
ESC [ <n> E
CNL
Cursor Next Line
Cursor down <n> lines from current position
only work as long as the bottom of the console window is not reached.
At the bottom there is no space left to move the cursor down so it just moves left (with the CR of CRLF) and the line printed before is overwritten from its beginning.
To echo a newline, add a dot . right after the echo:
echo.
This worked for me, no delayed expansion necessary:
#echo off
(
echo ^<html^>
echo ^<body^>
echo Hello
echo ^</body^>
echo ^</html^>
)
pause
It writes output like this:
<html>
<body>
Hello
</body>
</html>
Press any key to continue . . .
You can use #echo ( #echo + [space] + [insecable space] )
Note: The insecable space can be obtained with Alt+0160
Hope it helps :)
[edit] Hmm you're right, I needed it in a Makefile, it works perfectly in there. I guess my answer is not adapted for batch files... My bad.
simple
set nl=.
echo hello
echo%nl%
REM without space ^^^
echo World
Result:
hello
world
Be aware, this won't work in console because it'll simulate an escape key and clear the line.
Using this code, replace <ESC> with the 0x1b escape character or use this Pastebin link:
:: Replace <ESC> with the 0x1b escape character or copy from this Pastebin:
:: https://pastebin.com/xLWKTQZQ
echo Hello<ESC>[Eworld!
:: OR
set "\n=<ESC>[E"
echo Hello%\n%world!
Adding a variant to Ken's answer, that shows setting values for environment variables with new lines in them.
We use this method to append error conditions to a string in a VAR, then at the end of all the error checking output to a file as a summary of all the errors.
This is not complete code, just an example.
#echo off
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
:: the two blank lines are required!
set NLM=^
set NL=^^^%NLM%%NLM%^%NLM%%NLM%
:: Example Usage:
Set ErrMsg=Start Reporting:
:: some logic here finds an error condition and appends the error report
set ErrMsg=!ErrMsg!!NL!Error Title1!NL!Description!NL!Summary!NL!
:: some logic here finds another error condition and appends the error report
set ErrMsg=!ErrMsg!!NL!Error Title2!NL!Description!NL!Summary!NL!
:: some logic here finds another error condition and appends the error report
set ErrMsg=!ErrMsg!!NL!Error Title3!NL!Description!NL!Summary!NL!
echo %ErrMsg%
pause
echo %ErrMsg% > MyLogFile.log
Log and Screen output look like this...