I need to call .bat file from Powershell script

Question

We are migrating perl script to powershell script. In Perl the code is as shown below

$rc=\'D:\\\\EmailConnector\\\\run.bat> $EmailConnector_log;\';


        

Answer 1

Use the call operator (&), like this:

& 'D:\EmailConnector\run.bat' > $EmailConnector_log

The return value of the batch script is automatically put into the variable $LastExitCode.

Answer 2

Is that what you mean?

Start-Process "cmd" -ArgumentList '/c','D:\EmailConnector\run.bat' -WorkingDirectory "D:\EmailConnector"

or this one if you need another argument for logfile

Start-Process "cmd" -ArgumentList '/c','D:\EmailConnector\run.bat','EmailConnector_log' -WorkingDirectory "D:\EmailConnector"

Answer 3

Or, since there are no spaces in the path, you can just execute the batch file directly from PowerShell:

D:\EmailConnector\run.bat > $EmailConnector_log

This is one of the advantages of PowerShell being both a "shell" and a "scripting language". Execution of batch, cmd, vbs, exe files is straightforward - usually. Parameter passing can be an issue but these days that is easily solved with the stop parsing operator: --%.