Windows Batch file debugger?

Question

Is there a program like Visual Studio that allows you to debug (dos) batch files? What techniques could I use to debug? Martin Brown answered a batch file question with a nice for / each loop. I would love to see the values of the variables as they loop.

for /R A %i IN (*.jpg) DO xcopy %i B /M

Answer 1

To print the values of the variables as they loop you could try:

for /l %A in (1,1,10) do (
    @echo %A
)

If you want to stop and examine each line as it is executed try:

for /l %A in (1,1,10) do (
    @echo %A
    pause
)

which will halt the script at each iteration.

Your example looks like a backup script for images;

for /R %i in (*.jpg) do (
    @echo %i
    xcopy %i %DESTINATION% /M
)

If you make a script of this you can pipe all the output to a log file, just don't forget to use %%i instead of %i if you're not typing this at the shell.

Answer 2

you mean besides just doing an echo HERE I AM type of thing? i don't know of any. i just debug my batch files by remming out the actions and adding echo's until i know its working correctly. i also wrote my own one line "outputdebugstring" application that sends anything on its command line to the debugger, but that probably isn't necessary for most batches where you can just watch the screen. inserting "pause"'s can help slow things down too.

best regards don

Answer 3

Running Steps is like the IDE. You get an 'Analyzer' which is the equivalent of a compiler. It shows you errors and warnings in your code. It has an integrated environment that allows you to step over, into, etc. It even unrolls for loops which I find awesome. Check it out at http://www.steppingsoftware.com. It's helped me a lot.