Reading serial port from command line.

Is there a way to read a line of data from the serial port from DOS/NT COMMAND. The only method I've found mentioned in my web searches is the "TYPE" command. But I've not been able to make it work. If I enter "type com1", it seems to begin reading the port, but no matter what control characters I send along with the data, nothing prints to the screen until the buffer is completely full, (I'm guessing...in any case, I have to send a bunch of data before it prints to the screen). And even when it does return data to the screen, it never exits back to the command prompt...just keeps reading the port. Am I missing some parameters or switches? Or is there a better command to use for this?

Hi 777subob,

With little searching I have come across this Stackoverflow question and in the question the person uses the copy command to capture output from a serial port. So there is another method, though I don't think using copy will be any better of an option.

Note: COPY COM1 CON is the same as TYPE COM1

When done capturing data, to stop the copy/type command from endlessly attempting to receive further output from the serial port, the device on the over end should send a Ctrl Z control character. (It's Unicode codepoint integer value being 26.) This stops either command from running and returns to the interactive prompt. You can manually press Ctrl Z.


No parameter or switch is missing. There are no built-in/'better' commands readily available that address this task; there is no easy way to read data from a serial port via the command prompt.