Željko Filipin's Blog on Software and Testing

I am using Log Parser to parse log files. I parse a lot of files and I wanted to make a batch file that will do it for me.

I pasted my commands to a batch file, executed it, and to my surprise, it would parse the files but would not find anything.

This is content of my batch file:

LogParser "SELECT text FROM errors.log WHERE text LIKE '2008-%'"

When I execute it, it does not find anything:

C:\>parse_logs.cmd
C:\>LogParser "SELECT text FROM errors.log WHERE text LIKE '2008-'"

Statistics:
-----------
Elements processed: 34
Elements output: 0
Execution time: 0.02 seconds

When I executed the command from command prompt, Log Parser would find what I was looking for:

C:\>LogParser "SELECT text FROM errors.log WHERE text LIKE '2008-%'"

Statistics:
-----------
Elements processed: 34
Elements output: 24
Execution time: 0.02 seconds

I looked around, asked a few people but no luck.

I finally found the problem.

There is % in Log Parser SQL query:

LIKE '2008-%'

% represents variable in batch file, and if you take a closer look how batch file gets executed you will see that

LIKE '2008-%'

is executed as

LIKE '2008-'

I changed batch file to

LIKE '2008-%%'

and now it works.