Feeding multiline input (here documents) to commands in cmd.exe scripts

In Bash, I can do something like this

somecmd << END
a lot of
text here
END

to feed input to a command directly from a script. I need to do the same in CMD.exe batch files (.cmd scripts). Is it possible?

3 Answers

I believe you can use a single ^ character for each line.

EG:

echo This is a really long ^
text message that spans multiple ^
lines

returns:

C:\Users\Jonno>echo This is a really long ^
More? text message that spans multiple ^
More? lines
This is a really long text message that spans multiple lines

It's simple, but not as clean looking as it is in Unix/Linux. Try this:

(@echo.a lot of
@echo.text here
) | somecmd

Note that the . after the echo statement allows you to begin a line with blanks. The @ symbol is needed to prevent the echo statement from being sent to somecmd. You can eliminate the @ symbol thusly:

echo off
(echo.a lot of
echo.text here
) | somecmd
echo on

Until now, I don't have found any solution to this problem !

I have only a workaround in defining some BAT scripts.

Using my script, the solution to your problem look like this

call INIT-TRAMEX.bat
%assign-sysout% FILE.SYSOUT.TXT
%w% a lot of
%w% text here
somecmd <%sysout%

But in all cases, the direct indirection is impossible.

INIT-TRAMEX.bat file defines %ASSIGN-SYSOUT% and %W% variables

::******************************************************************************
::* INIT-TRAMEX.bat
::******************************************************************************
@echo OFF
set scriptdir=c:\Scripts
set ASSIGN-SYSOUT=call %scriptdir%\AssignSysout.bat
set WRITE-TEXT=call %scriptdir%\WriteText.bat
set W=call %scriptdir%\WriteText.bat

ASSIGN-SYSOUT script defines %sysout% variable and create an empty file. It contains following lines

set sysout=%1
@echo.>%sysout%
del %sysout%

WRITE-TEXT script contains following lines

IF "%1"=="" goto line
echo %* >>%sysout%
goto quit
:line
echo. >>%sysout%
:quit

Using this tips, DOS script is more readable.