https://stackoverflow.com/questions/14952295/set-output-of-a-command-as-a-variable-with-pipes
The lack of a Linux-like backtick/backquote facility is a major annoyance of the pre-PowerShell world. Using backquotes via for-loops is not at all cosy. So we need kinda of setvar myvar cmd-line command.
In my %path% I have a dir with a number of bins and batches to cope with those Win shortcomings.
One batch I wrote is:
:: setvar varname cmd
:: Set VARNAME to the output of CMD
:: Triple escape pipes, eg:
:: setvar x dir c: ^^^| sort
:: -----------------------------
@echo off
SETLOCAL
:: Get command from argument
for /F "tokens=1,*" %%a in ("%*") do set cmd=%%b
:: Get output and set var
for /F "usebackq delims=" %%a in (`%cmd%`) do (
ENDLOCAL
set %1=%%a
)
:: Show results
SETLOCAL EnableDelayedExpansion
echo %1=!%1!
So in your case, you would type:
> setvar text echo Hello
text=Hello
The script informs you of the results, which means you can:
> echo text var is now %text%
text var is now Hello
You can use whatever command:
> setvar text FIND "Jones" names.txt
What if the command you want to pipe to some variable contains itself a pipe?
Triple escape it, ^^^|:
> setvar text dir c: ^^^| find "Win"