Keep CMD open after BAT file executes

From this news group posting by Mark Zbikowski himself:

The differences between .CMD and .BAT as far as CMD.EXE is concerned are: With extensions enabled, PATH/APPEND/PROMPT/SET/ASSOC in .CMD files will set ERRORLEVEL regardless of error. .BAT sets ERRORLEVEL only on errors.

In other words, if ERRORLEVEL is set to non-0 and then you run one of those commands, the resulting ERRORLEVEL will be:

• left alone at its non-0 value in a .bat file
• reset to 0 in a .cmd file.

Two years old, but for completeness...

Standard, inline approach: (i.e. behaviour you'd get when using & in Linux)

START /B CMD /C CALL "foo.bat" [args [...]]

Notes: 1. CALL is paired with the .bat file because that where it usually goes.. (i.e. This is just an extension to the CMD /C CALL "foo.bat" form to make it asynchronous. Usually, it's required to correctly get exit codes, but that's a non-issue here.); 2. Double quotes around the .bat file is only needed if the name contains spaces. (The name could be a path in which case there's more likelihood of that.).

If you don't want the output:

START /B CMD /C CALL "foo.bat" [args [...]] >NUL 2>&1

If you want the bat to be run on an independent console: (i.e. another window)

START CMD /C CALL "foo.bat" [args [...]]

If you want the other window to hang around afterwards:

START CMD /K CALL "foo.bat" [args [...]]

Note: This is actually poor form unless you have users that specifically want to use the opened window as a normal console. If you just want the window to stick around in order to see the output, it's better off putting a PAUSE at the end of the bat file. Or even yet, add ^& PAUSE after the command line:

START CMD /C CALL "foo.bat" [args [...]] ^& PAUSE