Problem with for /f command on Windows XP

Question

Hello.

I'm using Windows XP Service Pack 3 and have Command Extensions enabled by default in the Windows Registry. Somehow, the following command does not work on this version of Windows but if I run it in Windows Server 2003 or Windows Vista Business, it works just fine. Any clue?

The problem is that on Windows XP, it seems like the /f option is not working at all and the do part of the command never gets executed.

This is the command:

for /f "tokens=1 delims=: " %A in ('tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq python.exe" /NH') do (
If "%A" == "python.exe" (
    echo "It's running"
) Else (
    echo "It's not running"
)
)

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The following does work on my Windows XP computer:

@echo off
for /f "tokens=1 delims=: " %%A in ('tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq java.exe" /NH') do (
    If "%%A" == "java.exe" (
     echo "It's running"
    ) Else (
     echo "It's not running"
    )
)

Note the use of %%A
(Sorry, I used java.exe because no python.exe was running at the time of my test ;) )

Answer 2

That's because tasklist.exe outputs to STDERR when no task is found. The for /f loop gets to see STDOUT only, so in case python.exe is not running, it has nothing to loop on.

Redirecting STDERR into STDOUT (2>&1) works:

for /F "tokens=1 delims=: " %A in ('tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq python.exe" /NH 2^>^&1') do (
  if "%A"=="python.exe" (
    echo "It's running"
  ) else (
    echo "It's not running"
  )
)

The ^ characters are escape sequences necessary for this to work.

Answer 3

This will work and not display the

INFO: No tasks running with the specified criteria

message:

@echo off
set found=0

for /f "tokens=1 delims=: " %%A in ('tasklist /NH') do (
    If /i "%%A" equ "python.exe" (
        set found=1
    ) 
)

if %found%==1 (
    @echo It's running
) else (
    @echo It's not running
)

Answer 4

Set RUNNING=False
for /f "tokens=1 delims=: " %%a in ('tasklist /FI "IMAGENAME eq python.exe" /NH 2^>NUL') do (Set RUNNING=True)
If %RUNNING% == True (
    @Echo It IS running
) ELSE (
    @Echo It's NOT running
)