CODEWITHSUNDEEP
batch-file
Gareth Jones
Gareth Jones

Reputation: 1399

Batch use of | symbol

What is "|" symbol used for in batch?

Because its not a command I cant use | /? to find out what it does, and if I have something like Stackoverflow|Stackoverflow (as an example) I'm told "stackoverflow is not a recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file"

Upvotes: 1

Views: 188

Answers (3)

Seth Carnegie
Seth Carnegie

Reputation: 75130

The pipe operator | directs (pipes) the output of the first command to the standard input of the second command. So running

somecmd | anothercmd

Would first run somecmd, then gather the output of somecmd and run anothercmd, giving it the output of somecmd as input. You can read about it in innumerable places, just google "pipe command line" or something like it.

Upvotes: 3

Guus
Guus

Reputation: 3006

This character is used to chain commands.

There's a lot of documentation available on this. Wikipedia is probably a good place to start.

Upvotes: 1

vcsjones
vcsjones

Reputation: 141638

It's the pipe operator, or redirect operator. From TechNet:

Reads the output from one command and writes it to the input of another command. Also known as a pipe.

The pipe operator (|) takes the output (by default, STDOUT) of one command and directs it into the input (by default, STDIN) of another command. For example, the following command sorts a directory:

dir | sort

In this example, both commands start simultaneously, but then the sort command pauses until it receives the dir command's output. The sort command uses the dir command's output as its input, and then sends its output to handle 1 (that is, STDOUT).

Upvotes: 4

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