How do I get the application exit code from a Windows command line?
A pseudo environment variable named errorlevel
stores the exit code:
echo Exit Code is %errorlevel%
Also, the if
command has a special syntax:
if errorlevel
See if /?
for details.
Example
@echo off
my_nify_exe.exe
if errorlevel 1 (
echo Failure Reason Given is %errorlevel%
exit /b %errorlevel%
)
Warning: If you set an environment variable name errorlevel
, %errorlevel%
will return that value and not the exit code. Use (set errorlevel=
) to clear the environment variable, allowing access to the true value of errorlevel
via the %errorlevel%
environment variable.
Testing ErrorLevel
works for console applications, but as hinted at by dmihailescu, this won't work if you're trying to run a windowed application (e.g. Win32-based) from a command prompt. A windowed application will run in the background, and control will return immediately to the command prompt (most likely with an ErrorLevel
of zero to indicate that the process was created successfully). When a windowed application eventually exits, its exit status is lost.
Instead of using the console-based C++ launcher mentioned elsewhere, though, a simpler alternative is to start a windowed application using the command prompt's START /WAIT
command. This will start the windowed application, wait for it to exit, and then return control to the command prompt with the exit status of the process set in ErrorLevel
.
start /wait something.exe
echo %errorlevel%
Use the built-in ERRORLEVEL Variable:
echo %ERRORLEVEL%
But beware if an application has defined an environment variable named ERRORLEVEL!