Question

Is there anyway to do the below without delayed expansion (one line, broken for readability)?

%comspec% /v:on /c %windir%\System32\reg.exe import c:\temp\test.reg &
 if !errorlevel! neq 0 pause

If it were an echo, I know that call can be used, but doesn’t seem to be available for use with the if.

Answer 1

One way is to use this older syntax:

%comspec% ... & if errorlevel 1 pause

In this case, a special variant of if statement is used, one that tests the current errorlevel state.

Another option might be this:

%comspec% ... || pause

The || command delimiter is roughly equivalent to & if !errorlevel! neq 0, i.e. the subsequent command is executed only if the previous one terminated with a non-zero exit code.