ECHO

Displays messages, or turns command echoing on or off.

Examples:

• echo on
• @echo off
• echo Hello
• echo "hello"

  Displays the quotes too.

• echo %PATH%

  Displays the contents of PATH variable.

• echo Owner ^& son

  Uses caret (^) to escape ampersand (&), thereby enabling echoing ampersands.

• echo 1&echo 2&echo 3

  Displays three strings, each followed by a newline.

• echo.

  Outputs a newline while the period is not being output. Without the period, outputs echo off or echo on. Adding a space before the period leads to the period being output. Other characters having the same effect as period include :;,/\(=+[].

• echo %random%>>MyRandomNumbers.txt

  While it seems to output random numbers to MyRandomNumbers.txt, it actually does not do so for numbers 0-9, since these, when placed before >>, indicate which channel is to be redirected. See also redirection.

• echo 2>>MyRandomNumbers.txt

  Instead of echoing 2, redirects standard error to the file.

• (echo 2)>>MyRandomNumbers.txt

  Echoes even a small number (in this case 2) and redirects the result.

• >>MyRandomNumbers.txt echo 2

  Another way to echo even a small number and redirect the result.

Displaying a string without a newline requires a trick:

• set <NUL /p=Output of a command:

  Displays "Output of a command:". The output of the next command will be displayed immediately after :.

• set <NUL /p=Current time: & time /t

  Displays "Current time: " followed by the output of time /t.

• (set <NUL /p=Current time: & time /t) >tmp.txt

  Like before, with redirecting the output of both commands to a file.

Links:

• echo at ss64.com
• echo at Microsoft

$ echo /?
Displays messages, or turns command-echoing on or off.

  ECHO [ON | OFF]
  ECHO [message]

Type ECHO without parameters to display the current echo setting.