{"id":20,"date":"2006-02-10T08:59:00","date_gmt":"2006-02-10T12:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/2006\/02\/10\/cli-101-for\/"},"modified":"2009-08-05T13:03:54","modified_gmt":"2009-08-05T17:03:54","slug":"cli-101-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/scripting\/20\/cli-101-for\/","title":{"rendered":"CLI 101 – FOR"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've long maintained that the FOR command is one of most basic commands every administrator should know. I have a short tutorial you can download at http:\/\/www.jdhitsolutions.com\/tutorials.htm<\/a><\/p>\n

Here are some other examples on using the FOR command. Let's say you have some command line utility that will take a computer name as a parameter, such as ping, and you want to run it against a list of computers. List the computer names in a text file like servers.txt. Then open a command prompt where the file is and run:<\/p>\n

FOR \/F %x in (servers.txt) do @ping -n 1 %x<\/span><\/p>\n

If you want to verify you have the basic syntax correct, run this:<\/p>\n

FOR \/F %x in (servers.txt) do @Echo %x<\/span><\/p>\n

This should display each server name in the list.<\/p>\n

If you want to save the output to a text file for any command you can use console redirection, like this:<\/p>\n

FOR \/F %x in (servers.txt) do @ping -n 1 %x >>pingresults.txt<\/span><\/p>\n

Be sure to use >> and not > or you will only get results for the last computer in the text file.<\/p>\n

If you want to take the FOR command and put it in a batch file, then remember to use %% instead of %. Here's a quick batch file version of the ping command example. To avoid errors, I recommend specifying the full path to the text file.<\/p>\n

@echo off
<\/span>::PINGCHECK.BAT
<\/span>REM Delete pingresults.txt if it already exists so we get a new log<\/span>
if Exist c:\\scripts\\pingresults.txt DEL c:\\scripts\\pingresults.txt<\/span>
FOR \/F %%x in (c:\\scripts\\servers.txt) do @ping -n 1 %%x >>c:\\scripts\\pingresults.txt<\/span>
::END OF SCRIPT<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

IMPORTANT: The FOR command is only case sensitive when it comes to variables. %x is different than %X. If you run:<\/p>\n

FOR \/F %x in (servers.txt) do @Echo %X<\/span><\/p>\n

You will not get the servers but rather %X.<\/p>\n

Technorati Tags:
commandline<\/a>
Scripting<\/a>
batch file<\/a>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve long maintained that the FOR command is one of most basic commands every administrator should know. I have a short tutorial you can download at http:\/\/www.jdhitsolutions.com\/tutorials.htm Here are some other examples on using the FOR command. 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