Check if process returns 0 with batch file

Question

I want to start a process with a batch file and if it returns nonzero, do something else. I need the correct syntax for that.

Something like this:

::x.bat

@set RetCode=My.exe
@if %retcode% is nonzero
   handleError.exe

As a bonus, you may consider answering the following questions, please :)

• How to write a compound statement with if?
• If the application My.exe fails to start because some DLL is missing will my if work? If not, how can I detect that My.exe failed to start?

Answer 1

ERRORLEVEL will contain the return code of the last command. Sadly you can only check >= for it.

Note specifically this line in the MSDN documentation for the If statement:

errorlevel Number

Specifies a true condition only if the previous program run by Cmd.exe returned an exit code equal to or greater than Number.

So to check for 0 you need to think outside the box:

IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO errorHandling
REM no error here, errolevel == 0
:errorHandling

Or if you want to code error handling first:

IF NOT ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO no_error
REM errorhandling, errorlevel >= 1
:no_error

Further information about BAT programming: http://www.ericphelps.com/batch/ Or more specific for Windows cmd: MSDN using batch files

Answer 2

This is not exactly the answer to the question, but I end up here every time I want to find out how to get my batch file to exit with and error code when a process returns an nonzero code.

So here is the answer to that:

if %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 exit %ERRORLEVEL%

Answer 3

How to write a compound statement with if?

You can write a compound statement in an if block using parenthesis. The first parenthesis must come on the line with the if and the second on a line by itself.

if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 (
    echo ErrorLevel is zero
    echo A second statement
) else if %ERRORLEVEL% == 1 (
    echo ErrorLevel is one
    echo A second statement
) else (
   echo ErrorLevel is > 1
   echo A second statement
)

Answer 4

The project I'm working on, we do something like this. We use the errorlevel keyword so it kind of looks like:

call myExe.exe
if errorlevel 1 (
  goto build_fail
)

That seems to work for us. Note that you can put in multiple commands in the parens like an echo or whatever. Also note that build_fail is defined as:

:build_fail
echo ********** BUILD FAILURE **********
exit /b 1