How to achieve per-batch-file echo on/off setting?

Question

We have some complex bat files where one calls another, which calls yet another. All of them have a @echo off at the top.

For debugging, I would like to selectively turn echo on in some of them. What is the easiest way to do this? Some ideas I have so far:

• Change the setting only in top level files. But this will only work for the few files known to be non-top-level. Otherwise any file can call any other.

• Change it back to previous setting before exiting each bat file. I will need to ensure there is a single point of exit. I will also need to know the setting on entry, which I don't know how to find.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Call echo on at the beginning of the files you want to turn it on for and their dependencies (and echo off at the end if you wish).

Note: You said it's for debugging, so it doesn't have to follow a grand scheme - it just has to produce output for now.

...unless I'm missing something, of course.

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You could write a quick script to REM out the echo off calls as well. For each file you want to have echo on for, text-search for ".bat" to get the list of dependencies. Then run the REMming script on them and search those for ".bat", rinse-repeat.

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Another option is if you don't mind seeing all output, just feed all the files through the REMming script. It's a bit easier than recursively seeking dependencies. Then put a big, blatent ECHO command at the beginning and end of the section you want to trace. Load the whole output into notepad and search for your bookmark.

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For reference, if you just run the command ECHO without any parameters, you can see the current echo setting: "ECHO is on|off.".

Answer 2

How about:

@if defined talk (echo on) else (echo off)

at the top of each file. Then you can set TALK=True and kick 'em all on at once.

To do this selectively for a specific file, you will need to use, e.g, TALK_XYZ, and you will need to ensure that every batch file sets echo back off before exiting. This should likely be done by a "GOTO END" from all exit points:

...
:END
@echo off