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pythonwindowsbatch-fileerror-handlingcmd
Chris Halcrow
Chris Halcrow

Reputation: 31950

Does Windows shell %ERRORLEVEL% variable have a character limit?

A Windows shell has an %ERRORLEVEL% variable that can be used to find the exit code of a process that has been run via the shell. I can therefore use this in a .bat file to obtain the exit code of an external script that I call from within the .bat file. I want to return richer error information from the process I'm calling (a stack trace in the first instance). I want to return this from a Python script that I'm running, which I can do using the Python 'traceback' module. Can I hold this in %ERRORLEVEL%? Is there any documentation for this variable?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2134

Answers (3)

andrewmcc
andrewmcc

Reputation: 85

Sometimes the lower limit for %ERRORLEVEL% is -2147483648, for example, batch file:

set /a ERRORLEVEL = -1
:LOOP
set /a ERRORLEVEL = ERRORLEVEL * 2
REM ERRORLEVEL = %ERRORLEVEL%
@pause
@Goto :LOOP

will output 

REM ERRORLEVEL = -2147483648

before 

REM ERRORLEVEL = 0

but the command

set /a ERRORLEVEL = -2147483648

returns "Invalid number. Numbers are limited to 32-bits of precision."

set /a ERRORLEVEL = -2147483647

works.

Upvotes: 0

Moinuddin Quadri
Moinuddin Quadri

Reputation: 48067

%ERRORLEVEL% returns the exit code of program i.e., it is a integer value and does not have a character limit. As mention in wiki document for DOS:

In DOS terminology, an errorlevel is an integer exit code returned by an executable program or subroutine. Errorlevels typically range from 0 to 255.

The Windows section of the same document says:

Windows uses 32-bit unsigned integers as exit codes, although the command interpreter treats them as signed.

Upvotes: 2

gusg21
gusg21

Reputation: 147

If you're looking for returning a string, you can't assign a string to %ERRORLEVEL%. There is documentation on %ERRORLEVEL% here.

And you could try an environment variable- I don't code python, but I'm sure there's a way to do it in Python, and you can access them in Batch.

Also, if you know beforehand what errors will be thrown you can assign a number to each, and then exit with and have Batch output respectively. But that's boring and really unreadable, so you might not want to do that.

Upvotes: 2

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