How to execute multiple commands in a single line

Question

I know Unix has the following command which can execute multiple commands in a single line, how can I do this in DOS?

command1 ; command2 ; command3 ...

Or you could get [cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com/), and have unix cmds on windows :-) — James Hornitzky, Dec 05 '12 at 08:45
You can chain commands by using an ampersand `&`, e.g. echo Hello & echo World — Matthias, Dec 05 '12 at 08:43

score 192 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 16 '13 at 16:57

192

Googling gives me this:

Command A & Command B

Execute Command A, then execute Command B (no evaluation of anything)

Command A | Command B

Execute Command A, and redirect all its output into the input of Command B

Command A && Command B

Execute Command A, evaluate the errorlevel after running and if the exit code (errorlevel) is 0, only then execute Command B

Command A || Command B

Execute Command A, evaluate the exit code of this command and if it's anything but 0, only then execute Command B

edited Jun 16 '13 at 16:57

Extreme Coders

answered Dec 05 '12 at 08:44

SidR

53

Now, in 2014, googling gives me this. – philshem Oct 16 '14 at 13:17
4

Google doesn't answer questions, Google finds people's answers to questions. If no one answers the question first, Googling is pointless! :-) – SharpC Sep 18 '15 at 12:13
3

I just found this googling and it helped me :) – Yíu Nov 27 '15 at 00:49
1

If I define some aliases (e.g. doskey a=echo a doskey b=echo b) I can't run a && b. Is there a way around it? – Yaniv Aug 23 '16 at 16:49
@Yaniv Ask this as a new question (clicking the "Ask Question" button on the top right), not as a comment. – peterh Oct 05 '16 at 15:37
6

You know honestly the way the stackoverflow community punishes unpopular questions and jumps on people who asks duplicate questions makes asking a question in a comment make a lot more sense. Granted, people should look in stackoverflow first before asking a question, but some people suck at searching and sometimes searches bring newer questions up first (like this one). I guess that's a problem with google. – ggb667 Jan 18 '17 at 18:29
For posterity: `errorlevel` (aka `Exist status`) and `exit code` are synonymous. They refer to the value returned by a child process to a parent process (e.g., the OS shell and the program called from the shell). The former are terms used with DOS-OS's and the latter is associated with Unix systems. See [Wiki: Exit Status](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_status) – Minh Tran Dec 01 '17 at 02:16

1 Answers1