Make Batch File Cmd Window Stay Open For X Seconds

batchcommand line

I'm running a batch file on a server to dump a MySQL database.

I'd like to have the cmd window stray open for, say, 20 seconds, and then close. That's so if I run it manually I can see that it finished the task .

I tried Sleep 20, but it doesn't look like it works. The file is like this:

echo CAMS MySQL database backup

"d:\program files\mysql\mysql server 5.1\bin\mysqldump" -u xxxxxxx -pxxxxxx --result-file="D:\MySQL_Data_Backups\cams\cams.%DATE:~10,4%-%DATE:~4,2%-%DATE:~7,2%.sql" cams

echo Done!
sleep 20

When I run this, it closes the window without showing the final echo ("Done!").

If I use pause instead of sleep, it does show the final echo, but I would like the window to close after a delay.

Any suggestions as to what I have done wrong pls?

Best Answer

Use this:

@echo off
echo done
ping 127.0.0.0 -n 1 -w 20000 > nul

-n 1 attempt to connect once -w 20000 waits 20 sec

@echo off just to have prettier output

Another one is:

timeout 20

This you can stop even before it counts down to 0.

Related Solutions

Windows – How to make a batch file wait / sleep for some seconds

There are many sleep utilities you can download and drop into your System32 folder, one is provided with the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit called sleep.exe.

You can also use the ping trick:

:sleep
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 2 -w 1000 > NUL
ping 127.0.0.1 -n %1 -w 1000 > NUL

then from somewhere in your batch file, you can call it like so:

CALL :sleep 1

Windows – Batch File, PING, errorlevel and > null what do they do

I suspect that you've named your batch file ping.bat, which as explained here would be the source of your problem.

If this indeed is the case, what's happening is that ping isn't actually running the ping command, but ping.bat with those arguments - sending you into an infinite recursion that doesn't end until you break it.

That's why you see the command constantly iterating in Command Prompt without any output when you run the batch file, because it's not actually executing the ping command, but calling on itself with those very arguments, which then calls itself, which - well, you get the picture.

The > null part is a redirection; the > operator means that the program's output will be written to the following file rather than the console. The special file name nul (not null) is handled by Windows internally; anything you write there is simply discarded. This way a script can run a program and just check if it succeeded, without cluttering the console. (Similarly, < would redirect input from file.)

1> is the full form of > and it means "redirect the first file descriptor".

On Unix-like operating systems, a file descriptor is a number used by programs to reference files that the program currently holds open. By convention, file descriptors 0, 1, 2 correspond to "standard input" (stdin), "standard output" (stdout), and "standard error output" (stderr); all higher numbers correspond to files that the program itself has opened.
Windows differs from this in many ways – it uses "file handles" and doesn't number them 0-1-2-3... are just a few small differences. However, the cmd.exe script interpreter still understands 1> and 2> to mean redirection of regular output and error output specifically, to make things just a little bit easier for those coming from Linux or other Unix-likes.

As for the errorlevel, it is not a command, but a mode in the if command. Each program, upon exiting, returns a number called an "exit status" to the system (and to the parent program); by convention, 0 means success, and ≥1 means some sort of failure.

In cmd.exe, you can access the last command's exit status through the special %errorlevel% variable, for example:
```
if %errorlevel% NEQ 0 echo The previous command failed!
```
There is another syntax, coming from old Windows and MS-DOS versions that did not have the special variable; it checks if the exit status is equal to or greather than a given number:
```
if errorlevel 1 echo The previous command failed!
```

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Windows – How to make a batch file wait / sleep for some seconds

Windows – Batch File, PING, errorlevel and > null what do they do

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