How do I to run several commands at once at the command line?

Question

When using Unix I can run several commands at the command line prompt in a row:

# command1; command2; command3

Or even chain them by checking the exit statuses:

# command1 && command2 && command3

Is same possible on Windows XP command prompt?

I often have to run several software building commands on Windows...

Answer 1

You've got a few options at the command prompt.

As @barlop mentioned, there's using && to chain commands as long as the previous was successful.

There's also ||, which will stop executing after the first successful command.

Finally, commands can be grouped with parenthesis (), as follows:

C:\>(
echo command 1
echo command 2
)

Grouping can also be used with other commands, such as if or for, allowing for things like:

C:\>for %i in (*.7z) do @(
md "%~ni"
cd "%~ni"
7za.exe x "%~fi"
cd ..
del "%i"
)

Answer 2

In cmd.exe you can use & for chaining commands (like ; in sh).

echo a & echo b

The && and || operators work too.

Answer 3

ntcmds.chm mentions
under concepts.."cmd shell overview"

&& Use to run the command following && only if the command preceding the symbol is successful

So you can do

C:\>echo a && echo a

added

& is more appropriate as an answer than &&

here from ntcmds.chm

& "Use to separate multiple commands on one command line. Cmd.exe runs the first command, and then the second command."

&& "Use to run the command following && only if the command preceding the symbol is successful. Cmd.exe runs the first command, and then runs the second command only if the first command completed successfully. " (it's a boolean short circuit AND)

|| "Use to run the command following || only if the command preceding || fails. Cmd.exe runs the first command, and then runs the second command only if the first command did not complete successfully (receives an error code greater than zero)." (it's a boolean short circuit OR i.e. given the expression "A or B" where A and B are boolean values of TRUE or FALSE, it only needs one to be true, so if A is true it won't go as far as B because it won't need to, in order to make its evaluation)