Extracting data from one text file to another using a batch file

Question

Recently I've been having problems with my internet connection. In order to find the problem in the chain I looked into some code I found online. I have never written code for a batch-file before, so just go ahead and expect me to know barrely anything. Anyway, I played around with it a bit and found out what each of the lines does.. to an extend at least. Now the results I'm getting from that file are included below as well. What I want to do is write a seperate file which I can run that takes the results from the first file and filters them into a new textfile.

I've already dug through some of the examples I've found here, but I don't simply want to copy paste (not that such a solution would work... I tried so I could reverse engineer it, but to no avail). I found some examples of how to get data from a file using a FOR and a FOREACH-Object, but it makes very little sense to me and I can't get it to work.

In short, I would like the pinging data that's placed in the first text file to be filtered by a batch file so it only sends part of the text to the new text file. Is anything like this possible and if so how do I go about this? Some explanation about how it works would be great as I like to take code apart and play around with it.

The code I use to get the pinging data whenever a connection fault is detected is listed below. I'm not saying it works perfectly mainly because I'm not 100% on how the %SystemRoot%-part works... But so far every time it triggers it also finds a request timeout. I'm open for suggestions to improve this but I would like for the focus to be on the noted challenge of extracting from one file and sending it to another.

:Loop
::Starting up the loop

PING -n 5 127.0.0.1 > NUL
::Set the ping delay

set Address=google.com
::Set the address to ping to google.com

%SystemRoot%\system32\ping.exe -n 1 %Address%|%SystemRoot%\system32\find.exe "TTL=" > NUL
::Check the connection

if %ERRORLEVEL% EQU 0 goto Loop
::If no error, return to Loop
::So if error, continue to next statement

echo Pinging %Address% >> D:\pingtest\Test\logfiletest.log
::Echo the pinging action

echo Trace route %Address% at %date% %time% >> 
D:\pingtest\Test\logfiletest.log
::Echo the route to trace and the timestamp

tracert %Address% >> D:\pingtest\Test\logfiletest.log
::Echo the pinging and results

echo. >> D:\pingtest\Test\logfiletest.log
::Nextline

goto Loop
::Return to Loop

These are the results I'm getting that I'm trying to filter into the new file.

Pinging google.com 
Trace route google.com at Fri 05/24/2019 10:22:40.92 
Tracing route to google.com [172.217.168.238]

over a maximum of 30 hops:
1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  MyLocation 
2    13 ms    12 ms    13 ms  195.190.228.150 
3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
4     7 ms    10 ms     8 ms  139.156.127.75 
5     7 ms     8 ms     9 ms  108.170.241.193 
6    15 ms    18 ms    17 ms  72.14.238.245 
7     8 ms     7 ms     7 ms  ams16s31-in-f14.1e100.net [172.217.19.206]

Trace complete.

So that is the result I am currently getting from the batch-file that I made after looking at the suggested code for another issue. Now what I would like to see something along the lines of the following

Trace route google.com at Fri 05/24/2019 10:22:40.92 
3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
5     7 ms     8 ms     9 ms  108.170.241.193

I'm taking rows 3 and 5 as examples because they often return a 'Request timed out'

Your expected output is a little unclear. Do you always want lines 3 & 5? Do you want 2 different lines each time? A dynamic amount of lines? All lines? Only lines that time out? The complexity of this answer is based solely on the complexity of the output. — BDM
– BDM, Commented May 26, 2019 at 22:37
A timeout from tracert doesn't tell you anything useful. It only says that a particular server refuses to give an answer to a ping request. As you can see (the list continues) that doesn't break the trace. What exactly do you want to achieve? — Stephan
– Stephan, Commented May 27, 2019 at 10:37
@Stephan hmm that is a good point. I was hoping to find the point of origin for my connection problems, but as you point out this would probably not do that... — Alwin G
– Alwin G, Commented May 27, 2019 at 16:48
@BDM well the file that i want to extract from has a lot more than just this one result. For now i would like to extract the date-time indication along with the 2 rows from every message so that i can more easily compare the results from each result taking data from row 3 and 5. — Alwin G
– Alwin G, Commented May 27, 2019 at 16:50

BDM · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-27 21:54:23Z

1

The quick and dirty solution to this, assuming you already have a large logfile of items to go through, is to make a new batch file to filter the results.

When hardcoded, this is really simple however if you ever want dynamic results you'll need to heavily modify this.

for /f "tokens=1,*" %%i in (logfile.log) do (
    if "%%i"=="Trace" echo %%i %%j >> shortlog.log
    if "%%i"=="3" echo %%i %%j >> shortlog.log
    if "%%i"=="5" echo %%i %%j >> shortlog.log
)

This outputs

Trace route google.com at Fri 05/24/2019 10:22:40.92 
3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
5     7 ms     8 ms     9 ms  108.170.241.193 
Trace complete.

If you want to remove the last line, you can change your original code from
echo Trace route %Address% at %date% %time% >> D:\pingtest\Test\logfiletest.log
to
echo #Trace route %Address% at %date% %time% >> D:\pingtest\Test\logfiletest.log

and change my code to
if "%%i"=="#Trace" echo %%i %%j >> shortlog.log

answered May 27, 2019 at 21:54

BDM

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4 Comments

Alwin G Over a year ago

It may be dirty, but for now I haven't found a deviation from the lines that can contain connection errors. So as far as I'm concerned this works just fine. As for leaving out the last bit of text, I decided to keep it in. What I did do however is add if "%%i"=="Trace" (if "%%j"=="complete." (echo. >> D:\Pingtest\Test\shortlog.log)) to the code. This takes any row that contains 'Trace' followed by 'complete.' and skips a row after finding it. The result is a nice seperation between the many results by using a whitespace.

Stephan Over a year ago

@AlwinG: ` if "%%i"=="Trace" (if "%%j"=="complete."` can be shortened to if "%%i% %j"=="Trace complete." for readabilty

Alwin G Over a year ago

@Stephan I think you misplaced a space there. Thanks to your comment I came up with if "%%i %%j"=="Trace complete." echo. >> D:\Pingtest\Test\shortlog.log Which works, but this replaces your %%i% %j by %%i %%j with the whitespace being in front of the double percentage. Is that wat you meant? Regardless thanks as this indeed did clarify and therefor improve the code

Stephan Over a year ago

@AlwinG: yes, of course, it's %%i %%j. Sometimes a finger is faster than the others...

michael_heath · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-27 00:33:32Z

0

Pipe tracert to find.

Change this line

tracert %Address% >> D:\pingtest\Test\logfiletest.log

to

tracert %Address% | find "Request timed out." >> D:\pingtest\Test\logfiletest.log

find searches for lines containing Request timed out. and will output those lines.

View find /? for help.

If you want to understand the other commands, view command /? where command represents the command that you want help with.

Also view Using command redirection operators

edited May 27, 2019 at 0:33

answered May 27, 2019 at 0:07

michael_heath

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1 Comment

Alwin G Over a year ago

Appreciate it, I'll look into it as soon as I get the chance

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