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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-13T18:17:13+00:00

I am having some trouble writing a script that will find a string iff

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I am having some trouble writing a script that will find a string iff the string occurs on higher line number than a previously found string.

FIND /N "BEGIN" "TEST_LOG.txt" && FIND "[ERROR" TEST_LOG.txt && EXIT /B 255

This string will first return an exit code of 255 if the log has been written (“BEGIN” will always appear) and the second string “[ERROR” is found.

Because it is desirable to append to the log file I would like to ONLY look for “[ERROR” on line numbers > the max line number discovered in the FIND /N “BEGIN” statement.

For example, with a log file like this:

BEGINNING 12:03:45.17
BEGINNING 12:03:45.17
BEGINNING 12:03:45.17
BEGINNING 12:03:45.17
[ERROR

I would expect the code to exit with error code 255.
But, with a log file like this I would not:

BEGINNING 12:03:45.17
BEGINNING 12:03:45.17
[ERROR
BEGINNING 12:03:45.17
BEGINNING 12:03:45.17
ALL IS WELL!

I look forward to your replies and thank you in advance of your help.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You simply need to establish the highest line number that each strings appears, and exit if the [ERROR string line number is greater than for BEGIN. Use a FOR /F loop to process each matching line from FINDSTR /N and set a variable to the line number. The last match processed wins, and will be the highest occurrence. You need two loops – one for each search string.

    I used the FINDSTR /B option to only match if the string appears at the beginning of the line. Obviously you can remove that option if it is not your requirement.

    @echo off
setlocal
set begin=0
set error=0
for /f "delims=:" %%N in ('findstr /nlb BEGIN TEST_LOG.txt') do set /a begin=%%N
for /f "delims=:" %%N in ('findstr /nlb [ERROR TEST_LOG.txt') do set /a error=%%N
if %error% gtr %begin% exit /b 255
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