How do I run a command that uses the result of a nested command on Microsoft's Windows?

Question

On Linux, I can run a command and use its result immediately in another command:

go test $(glide novendor)

The above command will first evaluate glide novendor and then substitute the result in. For example, if running glide novendor returns ./stuff/, the outer command would be called with go test ./stuff/.

What is the Windows equivalent of running a nested command like this?

Answer 1

go test $(glide novendor)

The above command will first evaluate glide novendor and then substitute the result in. For example, if running glide novendor returns ./stuff/, the outer command would be called with go test ./stuff/.

What is the Windows equivalent of running a nested command like this?

For a Windows command line way as you tagged, give this a shot. Just iterate the result of one command to another as a passed argument.

FOR /F %A IN ('glide novendor') DO go test %~A.

Now glide and go would have to be valid Windows commands I suppose to do this, and be sure to check environmental variables if needed.

Further Research

Type FOR /? from Windows Command Prompt and Press Enter

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ("string") DO command [command-parameters]
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ('command') DO command [command-parameters]

    or, if usebackq option present:

FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (file-set) DO command [command-parameters]
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN ('string') DO command [command-parameters]
FOR /F ["options"] %variable IN (`command`) DO command [command-parameters]

    filenameset is one or more file names.  Each file is opened, read
    and processed before going on to the next file in filenameset.
    Processing consists of reading in the file, breaking it up into
    individual lines of text and then parsing each line into zero or
    more tokens.  The body of the for loop is then called with the
    variable value(s) set to the found token string(s).  By default, /F
    passes the first blank separated token from each line of each file.
    Blank lines are skipped.  You can override the default parsing
    behavior by specifying the optional "options" parameter.  This
    is a quoted string which contains one or more keywords to specify
    different parsing options.  The keywords are:

        eol=c           - specifies an end of line comment character
                          (just one)
        skip=n          - specifies the number of lines to skip at the
                          beginning of the file.
        delims=xxx      - specifies a delimiter set.  This replaces the
                          default delimiter set of space and tab.
        tokens=x,y,m-n  - specifies which tokens from each line are to
                          be passed to the for body for each iteration.
                          This will cause additional variable names to
                          be allocated.  The m-n form is a range,
                          specifying the mth through the nth tokens.  If
                          the last character in the tokens= string is an
                          asterisk, then an additional variable is
                          allocated and receives the remaining text on
                          the line after the last token parsed.
        usebackq        - specifies that the new semantics are in force,
                          where a back quoted string is executed as a
                          command and a single quoted string is a
                          literal string command and allows the use of
                          double quotes to quote file names in
                          filenameset.

    Some examples might help:

FOR /F "eol=; tokens=2,3* delims=, " %i in (myfile.txt) do @echo %i %j %k

    would parse each line in myfile.txt, ignoring lines that begin with
    a semicolon, passing the 2nd and 3rd token from each line to the for
    body, with tokens delimited by commas and/or spaces.  Notice the for
    body statements reference %i to get the 2nd token, %j to get the
    3rd token, and %k to get all remaining tokens after the 3rd.  For
    file names that contain spaces, you need to quote the filenames with
    double quotes.  In order to use double quotes in this manner, you also
    need to use the usebackq option, otherwise the double quotes will be
    interpreted as defining a literal string to parse.

    %i is explicitly declared in the for statement and the %j and %k
    are implicitly declared via the tokens= option.  You can specify up
    to 26 tokens via the tokens= line, provided it does not cause an
    attempt to declare a variable higher than the letter 'z' or 'Z'.
    Remember, FOR variables are single-letter, case sensitive, global,
    and you can't have more than 52 total active at any one time.

    You can also use the FOR /F parsing logic on an immediate string, by
    making the filenameset between the parenthesis a quoted string,
    using single quote characters.  It will be treated as a single line
    of input from a file and parsed.

    Finally, you can use the FOR /F command to parse the output of a
    command.  You do this by making the filenameset between the
    parenthesis a back quoted string.  It will be treated as a command
    line, which is passed to a child CMD.EXE and the output is captured
    into memory and parsed as if it was a file.  So the following
    example:

      FOR /F "usebackq delims==" %i IN (`set`) DO @echo %i

    would enumerate the environment variable names in the current
    environment.

In addition, substitution of FOR variable references has been enhanced.
You can now use the following optional syntax:

    %~I         - expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (")
    %~fI        - expands %I to a fully qualified path name
    %~dI        - expands %I to a drive letter only
    %~pI        - expands %I to a path only
    %~nI        - expands %I to a file name only
    %~xI        - expands %I to a file extension only
    %~sI        - expanded path contains short names only
    %~aI        - expands %I to file attributes of file
    %~tI        - expands %I to date/time of file
    %~zI        - expands %I to size of file
    %~$PATH:I   - searches the directories listed in the PATH
                   environment variable and expands %I to the
                   fully qualified name of the first one found.
                   If the environment variable name is not
                   defined or the file is not found by the
                   search, then this modifier expands to the
                   empty string

The modifiers can be combined to get compound results:

    %~dpI       - expands %I to a drive letter and path only
    %~nxI       - expands %I to a file name and extension only
    %~fsI       - expands %I to a full path name with short names only
    %~dp$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH
                   environment variable for %I and expands to the
                   drive letter and path of the first one found.
    %~ftzaI     - expands %I to a DIR like output line

In the above examples %I and PATH can be replaced by other valid
values.  The %~ syntax is terminated by a valid FOR variable name.
Picking upper case variable names like %I makes it more readable and
avoids confusion with the modifiers, which are not case sensitive.

Answer 2

Your command may be (sort of) equivalent to glide novendor | xargs go test

You could also try python, or bash(using cygwin or mingw).

Answer 3

For anyone trying to write a batch script to run in CMD. You need to change the syntax a little bit. You can write it like this inside your `.bat file

Where A is the results of the command inside the parentheses.

FOR /F %%A IN ('glide novendor') DO go test %%A