Question

Just stumbled into a weird thing with %ERRORLEVEL% and wanted to see if anyone knows why and if there’s a way to fix it. Essentially, it seems as if commands executed inside if statements don’t set the %ERRORLEVEL% variable. The ERRORLEVEL (as in IF ERRORLEVEL 1, which is different from IF %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 1 ) check seems to still work fine though, so I can probably work around it, but it would still be nice to be able to print the error level. For debugging or whatever.

@echo off
Set TESTVAR=1

tasklist | find /I "IsntRunning.exe" > NUL
echo OUTSIDE_IF %ERRORLEVEL%

ThisWillSetErrorLevelTo9009ieNotRecognizedCommand

tasklist | find /I "IsntRunning.exe" > NUL
echo OUTSIDE_IF %ERRORLEVEL%

ThisWillSetErrorLevelTo9009ieNotRecognizedCommand

IF %TESTVAR% EQU 1 (
    Set ERRORLEVEL=
    tasklist | find /I "IsntRunning.exe" > NUL
    echo INSIDE_IF  ERRORLEVEL %ERRORLEVEL%
    
    IF ERRORLEVEL 1 (
        echo INSIDE_IF2  ERRORLEVEL GREQ 1 %ERRORLEVEL%
    )
    IF ERRORLEVEL 2 (
        echo INSIDE_IF2  ERRORLEVEL GREQ 2 %ERRORLEVEL%
    )
    IF ERRORLEVEL 3 (
        echo INSIDE_IF2  ERRORLEVEL GREQ 3 %ERRORLEVEL%
    )
)

tasklist | find /I "IsntRunning.exe" > NUL
echo OUTSIDE_IF ERRORLEVEL %ERRORLEVEL%

@echo on

Putting that in a batch file and running it produces this output:

C:\Users\username\Documents\work>test.bat
OUTSIDE_IF 1
‘ThisWillSetErrorLevelTo9009ieNotRecognizedCommand’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
OUTSIDE_IF 1
‘ThisWillSetErrorLevelTo9009ieNotRecognizedCommand’ is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
INSIDE_IF ERRORLEVEL 9009
INSIDE_IF2 ERRORLEVEL GREQ 1 9009
OUTSIDE_IF ERRORLEVEL 1

Relevant articles:

• ERRORLEVEL is not %ERRORLEVEL%
• Testing for a Specific Error Level in Batch Files (69576)

Answer 1

Try using setlocal enabledelayedexpansion at the start of your batch file, and !ERRORLEVEL! inside your IF. This seems to work for me:

@echo off
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
dir nul
echo %ERRORLEVEL%
if .1.==.1. (
  urklbkrlksdj - not a command
  echo %ERRORLEVEL%
  echo !ERRORLEVEL!
)