How to hide batch output

Question

I am putting the finishing touches to a batch script that transfers the contents of a locally edited web site to the internet.

The script opens in a console window, and outputs quite a lot of stuff the administrator needs to see in case something goes wrong. In that case, though, the output is being sent as E-Mail, so there is no need to display the output and confuse the user who runs the update unnecessarily. I need to display only a few lines (say, "starting synchronisation..." and "syncrhonisation complete").

Can anybody think of a way to stop output in a batch script? Kind of a total "echo off"?

A simple

my_batch_file > nul 

won't cut it, because as I said, a few things I need to show.

Answer 1

Windows actually does have the notion of stdout and stderr. Here's an example:

test.bat:

@echo off echo verbose stuff 1 echo verbose stuff 2 echo verbose stuff 3 echo important stuff! >&2 echo verbose stuff 4 

If you run it as 'test.bat' you'll get the full output. If you run it as 'test.bat >nul' then you'll only get the 'important' output (anything redirected to stderr, with the >&2)