Question

Simply put, I’ve set a most basic text progress indicator in a Windows XP/Windows 7 batch file that writes just after a command line tool’s output while it works, because it doesn’t look like it does anything for a bit. I do so by piping the blurb after the command as such:

app.exe -args "file"|echo Writing "file"...

This results in something like the following:

_______________
|app for work |  
|ver:2 10/2009|  
|_____________|  
Writing "file"...

Is there a way to slip a newline in between the application’s output and my output?

Things I’ve done and failed:

|echo.|echo
|echo.|echo.|echo
|echo.&echo.&echo
|echo [alt+255/hex:FF/ÿ/EOL][same again]
|echo -e \r\r (lol)
|echo.. (nope!)

The &’s are probably delayed until after the application does its thing, and by then it’s too late… Have I missed something? Is it even possible? I know this is not truly important, but I’m very curious.

Answer 1

From your example, I suspect that app.exe actually sends its output to standard error, rather than standard output. Otherwise its output would have been sent to the pipe and echo would have gobbled it up.

How about this:

app.exe -args "file" | (echo. & echo Writing "file")