Question

I’m trying to use a batch file to confirm a network connection using ping. I want to do batch run and then print if the ping was successful or not. The problem is that it always displays ‘failure’ when run as a batch. Here is the code:

@echo off
cls
ping racer | find "Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),"
if not errorlevel 1 set error=success
if errorlevel 1 set error=failure
cls
echo Result: %error%
pause

‘racer’ is the name of my computer. I’m having my computer ping itself so I can eliminate the variable of a poor connection. As I said before, the batch always results in failure. Oddly enough, the program works fine if I copy the code into the command prompt. Does anyone know why the program works fine in the command prompt but doesn’t work as a batch?
Thanks

Answer 1

I ‘m not exactly sure what the interaction between FIND and setting the error level is, but you can do this quite easily:

@echo off
for /f %%i in ('ping racer ^| find /c "(0%% loss)"') do SET MATCHES=%%i
echo %MATCHES%

This prints 0 if the ping failed, 1 if it succeeded. I made it look for just “0% loss” (not specifically 4 pings) so that the number of pings can be customized.

The percent sign has been doubled so that it’s not mistaken for a variable that should be substituted.

The FOR trick serves simply to set the output of a command as the value of an environment variable.