How to supress “Terminate batch job (Y/N)” confirmation?

Question

In cmd, when we press Ctrl+C we get the target application terminated but if the target application is called from a batch file, we get this "Terminate batch job (Y/N)" confirmation. I can never remember an instance where I chose not to terminate the batch job. How can we skip this confirmation?

Answer 1

AFAIK you can't as this behavior is by design and controlled by the command interpreter. There is no method of "mapping" or even "intercepting" this unless you de-compile and recompile the interpreter directly.

Answer 2

Press Ctrl+C twice.

Answer 3

I've been fighting with this desire to avoid the "Terminate batch job" prompt for a little while. My latest epiphany is a bit of a slight-of-hand (or DOS box), by replacing one instance of cmd.exe with another. This is accomplished by executing the command/program via start cmd /k followed immediately by exit in the .BAT file. The original DOS box disappears and the replacement DOS box can be stopped cleanly via Ctrl-C.

Consider the following example of a traceroute that can be interrupted by Ctrl+C, or allowed to complete, returning the user to the C:\> prompt:

@Echo Off
REM
set timeout=100
if not "%2"=="" set timeout=%2
REM
start cmd /k tracert -w %timeout% %1
exit

The environment substitution of a new command interpreter may not be for everyone, but to the naked eye, looks and works well for me.

Answer 4

If you don't need to do anything in the batch file after your application finishes normally, then using the start command ensures that the batch file is already finished by the time you press Ctrl-C. And hence the message will not appear.

For example:

@echo off

set my_command=ping.exe
set my_params=-t www.google.com

echo Command to be executed by 'start': %my_command% %my_params%

:: When NOT using /B or /WAIT then this will create a new window, while
:: execution of this very batch file will continue in the current window:

start %my_command% %my_params%

echo.
echo This line will be executed BEFORE 'start' is even finished. So, this
echo batch file will complete BEFORE one presses Ctrl-C in the other window.
echo.

:: Just for testing use 'pause' to show "Press any key to continue", to see
:: the output of the 'echo' commands. Be sure to press Ctrl-C in the window
:: that runs the 'ping' command (not in this very window). Or simply remove
:: the next line when confused:

pause

(Tested on Windows XP.)

Answer 5

At this site, I finally found an effective solution:

script.cmd < nul

To not have to type this out every time I made a second script called script2.cmd in the same folder with the line above. You may want to reverse the names. Works for me, but tested so far on XP only.

Answer 6

See this Stack Overflow question.

However, patching cmd.exe is not something I would do for that.

Answer 7

Install Clink and change the "terminate_autoanswer" setting.

# name: Auto-answer terminate prompt
# type: enum
# Automatically answers cmd.exe's 'Terminate batch job (Y/N)?' prompts. 0 =
# disabled, 1 = answer 'Y', 2 = answer 'N'.
terminate_autoanswer = 1

This then "just works" with any cmd.exe window. You don't need to alter what's running or otherwise, since clink piggy-backs on cmd.exe.

Frickin' awesome, IMO!

Answer 8

In my case it was the ping.bat file that was right in my user directory (C:\Users\ in Vista or C:\Documents and Settings\ in XP) that was holding the batch job indeterminately.

This batch file was executed whenever I ran ping from the command prompt where the current directory is my user directory. Ping-ing from the Run window, or from other user's directory was running well.

Removed the file from my user dir and the problem was resolved!

Answer 9

Start works, but now the window opened by the batch file is changed from the options I had and the "properties" are disabled (won't respond).

Answer 10

Simply redirect the batch stdin to null by adding >nul to the end of the line.

Answer 11

At the end of your script, just add the following command:
echo
This will not "damage" the behavior of your script, and it seems to prevent CDM to ask if you want to termininate the batch.