How Can I Make A Command Prompt Hang?

Question

Yes, I know you are probably going to complain saying it's a bad thing to do, but I want to do it anyway!

I am creating a batch program and at the end, I need it to hang and not accept user input. I know one method is just creating an infinite loop of:

    :pause
        pause > nul
        goto pause

but I don't think that's a great choice. Although I need it to hang, I need to to be able to be closed via the red 'X' close button at the top of the window.

Any ideas?

Did you try it? The window should close. Another option is `sleep 1000000`. — tdelaney, May 13 '15 at 19:50
@tdelaney Does `sleep 1000000` not accept `Ctrl + C` though? — , May 13 '15 at 19:51
What @stephan meant was something like **waitfor "something"** .. It won't terminate until you do something like **waitfor /si "something"** from another console window — cup, May 13 '15 at 20:19

rojo · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-14T13:44:52.943

This works for me. It redirects < NUL into self to prevent Ctrl+C from breaking, and uses start /b /wait to suppress the "Terminate batch job (Y/N)?" prompts.

@echo off
setlocal

>NUL (echo(%* | findstr "\<hang\>" && waitfor redX)

rem // *** PUT YOUR MAIN SCRIPT HERE ***
echo End of line.
rem // ******* END MAIN SCRIPT *********
call :hang
goto :EOF

:hang
start /b /wait "" "%~f0" hang ^<NUL

On the initial launch of the script, the echo(%* | findstr "\<hang\>" >NUL line looks for a script argument of "hang". If found, the script executes the waitfor command.

Normally, waitfor can be broken with Ctrl+C. But since the usual behavior of Ctrl+C is defeated by start /b and <NUL, the hanging effect is achieved unless a user does Ctrl+Break or sends the answering waitfor signal.

The red X still works, though.

Great answer! That would be useful to others, but not me unfortunately. I have a big program and I'm testing for something, then, if it exists, hanging the cmd. — , May 14 '15 at 15:15

How Can I Make A Command Prompt Hang?

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