Question

There has been variants of this question asked for generations, but despite writing some quite complicated Windows scripts, I can’t seem to find out how to make them actually silent.

The following is an excerpt from one of my current scripts:

@ECHO OFF
SET scriptDirectory=%~dp0
COPY %scriptDirectory%test.bat %scriptDirectory%test2.bat
FOR /F %%f IN ('dir /B "%scriptDirectory%*.noext"') DO (
del "%scriptDirectory%%%f"
)
ECHO

The result of this is:

C:\Temp> test.bat
        1 file(s) copied.
File Not Found
Echo is off.

C:\Temp>

Whereas the “1 file(s) copied.” is just annoying, the “File Not Found” makes the user think that something has gone wrong (which it hasn’t – no files is fine).

Answer 1

To suppress output, use redirection to NUL.

There are two kinds of output that console commands use:

• standard output, or stdout,

• standard error, or stderr.

Of the two, stdout is used more often, both by internal commands, like copy, and by console utilities, or external commands, like find and others, as well as by third-party console programs.

>NUL suppresses the standard output and works fine e.g. for suppressing the 1 file(s) copied. message of the copy command. An alternative syntax is 1>NUL. So,

COPY file1 file2 >NUL

or

COPY file1 file2 1>NUL

or

>NUL COPY file1 file2

or

1>NUL COPY file1 file2

suppresses all of COPY‘s standard output.

To suppress error messages, which are typically printed to stderr, use 2>NUL instead. So, to suppress a File Not Found message that DEL prints when, well, the specified file is not found, just add 2>NUL either at the beginning or at the end of the command line:

DEL file 2>NUL

or

2>NUL DEL file

Although sometimes it may be a better idea to actually verify whether the file exists before trying to delete it, like you are doing in your own solution. Note, however, that you don’t need to delete the files one by one, using a loop. You can use a single command to delete the lot:

IF EXIST "%scriptDirectory%*.noext" DEL "%scriptDirectory%*.noext"