Batch check if last printed line contains a word

Question

I have 2 batch files a.bat and b.bat. a.bat calls b.bat and b.bat prints a sentence to the screen. How can I check that sentence to see if it contains a word and if it contains a set it as a variable. For example

Sentance: Hello, how are you today?
If %Sentance contains% Hello set var=Hello
If %Sentance contains% Hi set var=hi

There may be more than one Sentance on the screen so I want to check the most recently displayed sentance.

Here's what I have.

for /f delims^=^ eol^= %%i in ('b.bat') do set lastline=%%i
set "var="
echo %lastline%|findstr /i "\<hi\>">nul && set "var=hi"
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 (GOTO NEXT0) ELSE (GOTO FOUND)
:NEXT0
echo %lastline%|findstr /i "\<hello\>">nul && set "var=hello"
IF ERRORLEVEL 0 (GOTO NEXT1) ELSE (GOTO FOUND)
:NEXT1
echo %lastline%|findstr /i "\<hola\>">nul && set "var=hola"
IF ERRORLEVEL 0 (GOTO NEXT2) ELSE (GOTO FOUND)
:found
echo %var%
pause

The code doesn't work if the last line is something like "this is a message hello"

Answer 1

Stephan's answer already shows how to find specific words in the output of the called batch file b.bat.

To check the output of b.bat in the caller a.bat, you can do the following:

Supposing b.bat contains the following:

echo Hello, how are you?

a.bat might look like this:

for /F delims^=^ eol^= %%L in ('
    b.bat ^| findstr /I /R /C:"\<hello\>" /C:"\<hi\>"
') do (
    set "FOUND=%%L"
)

This pipes the output of b.bat into findstr, which uses multiple search strings, then its output is captured by a for /F loop, which assigns the output to the variable FOUND.

Answer 2

Echo off
:Loop
    Set /p Input=%CD%^>
    rem Show what the user typed
    Echo %Input%
    rem Execute user's typed command
    %Input%
    rem Get first word and rest of line
    for /f "tokens=1*" %%A in ("%input%") do echo %%A AND %%B
Goto Loop

Which gets what the user typed and mimics cmd processing (press Ctrl + C to stop it). Use set to manipulate the text.

You can use a for loop to break up text.

Answer 3

echo the string and search for the keyword:

set sentence=Hello, how are you?
echo %sentence%|findstr /i "\<hello\>">nul && set "var=Hello"
echo %sentence%|findstr /i "\<hi\>">nul && set "var=Hi"

\< and \> means "Word boundaries", this avoids false positives (Chinese, Chello,...)

>nul redirects the found string to nirvana to keep the screen clear.

&& executes the set command only, if previous command (findstr) was successful.

Edit

Based on your last comment, I understand: a.bat calls b.bat. b.bat writes several lines, and a.bat wants to get the last of them (I hope, I got that right).

to get the last line of b.bat, use:

for /f delims^=^ eol^= %%i in ('b.bat') do set lastline=%%i
echo you said: %lastline%
set "var="
echo %lastline%|findstr /i "\<hello\>">nul && set "var=Hello"
echo %lastline%|findstr /i "\<hi\>">nul && set "var=Hi"
echo %lastline%|findstr /i "\<hola\>">nul && set "var=Hola"
echo/%var%

But there is a little problem: for captures the output of b.bat instead of showing it to the screen. (Especially the prompt of set /p - so you don't know, when or what to input). To work around that, force b.bat to write to screen (>con writes directly to screen). So basically, b.bat should look like this:

@echo off
echo this line gets captured by a.bat
>con echo this line goes directly to screen
>con set /p "input=give me input: "
echo something about %input%.

Note: I used the eol-trick from aschipfl's answer, because (although it looks ugly) this works even for both " and ;, which are problematic with the "standard way" ("delims= eol="). Of course this still isn't foolproof (for example & still makes problems)