How do I use a pipe to redirect the output of one command to the input of another?

I have a program which sends text to an LED sign.

prismcom.exe

To use the program to send "Hello":

prismcom.exe usb Hello

Now, I wish to, for example use a command program called Temperature.

temperature

Let's say the program gives your computer's temperature.

Your computer is 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now, I wish to write the output of temperature to prismcom.exe:

temperature | prismcom.exe usb

This does not seem to work.

Yes, I've looked for a solution to this for more than twenty minutes. In all cases, they are either kludges/hacks or a solution for something besides the Windows command line.

I would appreciate direction as to how I would pipe the output from temperature to prismcom.

Thanks!

Edit: Prismcom has two arguments. The first will always be 'usb'. Anything that comes after that will be displayed on the sign.

Solution 1:

Try this. Copy this into a batch file - such as send.bat - and then simply run send.bat to send the message from the temperature program to the prismcom program.

temperature.exe > msg.txt
set /p msg= < msg.txt
prismcom.exe usb "%msg%"

Solution 2:

You can also run exactly same command at Cmd.exe command-line using PowerShell. I'd go with this approach for simplicity...

C:\>PowerShell -Command "temperature | prismcom.exe usb"

Please read up on Understanding the Windows PowerShell Pipeline

You can also type in C:\>PowerShell at the command-line and it'll put you in PS C:\> mode instanctly, where you can directly start writing PS.

Solution 3:

This should work:

for /F "tokens=*" %i in ('temperature') do prismcom.exe usb %i

If running in a batch file, you need to use %%i instead of just %i (in both places).