How do I make a log of all ECHO commands in a BATCH file?

Question

I am trying to use a BATCH file as a choose your own adventure story in which the user can create a character and be called by name and such by the characters in the story.

Answer 1

You cannot do that in batch script literally, but if you define functions, you can output data within the function block that also writes to a log file before the function returns, like so:

@ECHO off
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION ENABLEEXTENSIONS
echo. 2>outfile.log

CALL :functionPerson "Jon Doe" jump
GOTO :END
:functionPerson fullname action
  ECHO fullname is ^"%~1^"
  ECHO action is %2
  ECHO %1 performs action %2>> outfile.log
EXIT /B 0
:END
pause

Answer 2

Each time you echo for the player to know what happens, you could also echo into your log file, adding date and time at the beginning of your line :) Simple as that for me. Don't know how your script looks though.

Answer 3

As my other answer got quite long due to some edits, here is a new suggestion (not much changed, but it makes the code quite easy to read):

@ECHO off
SET LogFile=logfile.out
set "say=call :logit "

%say% "This is my message!"
%say% "Hear my thunder?"

GOTO :end
:logit
ECHO %~1 
echo %date% %time% - %~1 >>%logfile%
EXIT /B 0
:end

Answer 4

for this purpose I use the following:

set LogFile=somepath\logfile.txt
set logg=^> _^&type _^&type _^>^>%LogFile%
echo this goes to screen AND file! %logg%

This is a bit tricky. So let's disassemble that line to four parts:

set logg=      ^> _          ^&type _           ^&type _^>^>%LogFile%

The Idea is to print the line to a temporary file (named _) (second part) then type the contents of that file to screen (third part) then type it to the logfile (fourth part).

Put that all to a variable (first part), so you don't have to type that monsterstring to every line. (this is the reason why the > and & are escaped with ^)

So every time you use

echo whatever %logg%

it will appear on the screen AND write to %logfile%

Note that this will also work:

 %logg% echo whatever

Edit djangofan: Also, you can do it with functions:

@ECHO off
:: do not enable delayed expansion since it will break this method
SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS
SET LogFile=logfile.out
SET Logg=^> tmp.out^&^& type tmp.out^&^&type tmp.out^>^>%LogFile%

CALL :logit "This is my message!"
CALL :logit "Hear my thunder?"

GOTO :end
:logit
ECHO %~1 %Logg%
DEL /Q tmp.out
EXIT /B 0
:end
pause

Edit Stephan: If you use CALL, the %logg% would be overkill. In that case I would just use:

:logit
echo %~1
echo %date%,%time% - %~1 >>logfile
exit /b 0

This might be the best solution to the original question, because the Date/Time will be written into logfile, but not on the screen. Btw: you don't have to delete the tempfile every time you use it, just delete it one time, just before the batch ends.