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How would I find the name of the PC running my batch program on it?

I would like to find the name of a PC that is running my batch program and be able to store it as a variable. Any help?

Vikas Gupta
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Rory Durrant
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    you can retrieve the hostname of a system from the cmd or powershell command line with `hostname`. you shouldn't need to store it as a var, just invoke it inline as you need it. – Frank Thomas Dec 14 '14 at 09:44
  • @FrankThomas - Why don't you provide this as (perhaps with a short example) an answer instead? – Nifle Dec 14 '14 at 09:51
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    `hostname` is an exe, and while it outputs the machine name on console, it will be non-trivial to capture it in a batch file. Luckily, there is already an environment variable set, and available (`ComputerName`) to use on typical windows system. – Vikas Gupta Dec 14 '14 at 11:20

3 Answers3

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On Windows, typically an environment variable is already set and available for you to use -

echo %ComputerName%
Vikas Gupta
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As Vikas Gupta has answered, you can use the pre-defined %COMPUTERNAME% environment variable that already contains the computer name. From a practical stand point, this should be all you need.

However, it is possible for a batch file to over-write the value, so it is not guaranteed that the value be correct.

You can use WMIC to directly read the computer name.

for /f "skip=1 delims=" %%A in (
  'wmic computersystem get name'
) do for /f "delims=" %%B in ("%%A") do set "compName=%%A"

The extra FOR loop eliminates unwanted carriage return characters that are an artifact of FOR /F interacting with the Unicode output of WMIC. With only one loop there is a carriage return at the end of each line that can cause problems.

dbenham
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    is there a reason for using wmic instead of just calling `hostname`? – eis Dec 14 '14 at 16:58
  • I thought of that after I wrote the answer. It certainly would be simpler. I'm no expert on these issues, but based on http://serverfault.com/q/260563/201695, I think host name and computer name are not guaranteed to be the same. But I think they are supposed to be the same under normal circumstances. – dbenham Dec 14 '14 at 17:33
0

In PowerShell you can also use:

[Environment]::MachineName

Here the value comes from .Net so it avoids the issue of using $Env:ComputerName.

Scott - Слава Україні
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Stef
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