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echo

Displays messages or turns on or off the command echoing feature. If used without parameters, echo displays the current echo setting.

Syntax

echo [<message>]
echo [on | off]

Parameters

Parameter Description
[on | off] Turns on or off the command echoing feature. Command echoing is on by default.
<message> Specifies the text to display on the screen.
/? Displays help at the command prompt.

Remarks

  • The echo <message> command is more useful when echo is turned off. To display a message that is several lines long without displaying any commands, you can include several echo <message> commands after the echo off command in your batch program.

  • After echo is turned off, the command prompt doesn't appear in the Command Prompt window. To display the command prompt, type echo on.

  • If used in a batch file, echo on and echo off don't affect the setting at the command prompt.

  • If there's an empty variable in a batch file while using echo, it displays "ECHO is off". To prevent seeing this message, and produce a blank line instead, place a colon (:) between echo and the variable. For example, echo:%var%.

  • To prevent echoing a particular command in a batch file, insert an (@) sign in front of the command. To prevent echoing all commands in a batch file, include the echo off command at the beginning of the file.

  • To display an exclamation mark (!) in batch scripts, wrap the word or phrase in double quotes followed by a caret before the exclamation mark ("Hello World^!"). Alternatively, a double caret (^^) can be used without the need for double quotes (Hello World^^!).

  • To display a pipe (|), ampersand (&) or redirection character (< or >) when you're using echo, use a caret (^) immediately before that character. For example, ^|, ^&, ^>, or ^<. To display a caret, type two carets in succession (^^).

  • When inside a block terminated by parentheses (()), both opening and closing parentheses must also be escaped using the caret (^) immediately before each one. For example, This is ^(now^) correct will correctly display This is (now) correct.

Examples

To display the current echo setting, type:

echo

To echo a blank line on the screen, type:

echo.

Note

Don't include a space before the period. Otherwise, the period appears instead of a blank line.

To prevent echoing commands at the command prompt, type:

echo off

Note

When echo is turned off, the command prompt doesn't appear in the Command Prompt window. To display the command prompt again, type echo on.

To prevent all commands in a batch file (including the echo off command) from displaying on the screen, on the first line of the batch file type:

@echo off

You can use the echo command as part of an if statement. For example, to search the current directory for any file with the .rpt file name extension, and to echo a message if such a file is found, type:

if exist *.rpt echo The report has arrived.

The following batch file searches the current directory for files with the .txt file name extension, and displays a message indicating the results of the search:

@echo off
if not exist *.txt (
echo This directory contains no text files.
) else (
   echo This directory contains the following text file^(s^):
   echo.
   dir /b *.txt
   )

If no .txt files are found when the batch file is run, the following message displays:

This directory contains no text files.

If .txt files are found when the batch file is run the following output displays (for this example, assume the files File1.txt, File2.txt, and File3.txt exist):

This directory contains the following text file(s):

File1.txt
File2.txt
File3.txt