findstr exit codes/errorlevel

Question

I have a program that is using findstr, and when the string is found the errorlevel returns 0 and when the string is not found the errorlevel returns 1. Alright, that's fine I can deal with that.

Where the issue lies is I cannot find any official documentation on what each errorlevel means for findstr. I need to know if anything else for findstr could ever return an errorlevel of 1, or if it only returns 1 when the string is not found.

Links to 'official' documentation are preferred, if there are any, but any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 04 '15 at 15:31

http://ss64.com/nt/findstr.html says:

FINDSTR will set %ERRORLEVEL% as follows:

0 (False) a match is found in at least one line of at least one file.
1 (True) if a match is not found in any line of any file, (or if the file is not found at all).
2 Wrong syntax 
An invalid switch will only print an error message in error stream.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 04 '15 at 14:46

It is documented in the Dos 6.22 Help for FIND command.

│FIND exit codes
│
│The following list shows each exit code and a brief description of its
│meaning:
│
│0
│    The search was completed successfully and at least one match was found.
│
│1
│    The search was completed successfully, but no matches were found.
│
│2
│    The search was not completed successfully. In this case, an error
│    occurred during the search, and FIND cannot report whether any matches
│    were found.
│
│You can use the ERRORLEVEL parameter on the <If> command line in a batch
│program to process exit codes returned by FIND.

Yes. I searched for a more recent reference for 12 years. I have Dos 6.22 and OS/2 Warp 4 (it says _It returns 0 for normal completion_). — bill, Aug 04 '15 at 23:56

findstr exit codes/errorlevel

2 Answers2