Echo off but messages are displayed

I turned off echo in bat file.

@echo off

then I do something like this

...
echo %INSTALL_PATH%
if exist %INSTALL_PATH%(
echo 222
...
)

and I get:

The system cannot find the path specified.

message between those two echos.

What can be the reason of this message and why message ignores echo off?

Solution 1:

As Mike Nakis said, echo off only prevents the printing of commands, not results. To hide the result of a command add >nul to the end of the line, and to hide errors add 2>nul. For example:

Del /Q *.tmp >nul 2>nul

Like Krister Andersson said, the reason you get an error is your variable is expanding with spaces:

set INSTALL_PATH=C:\My App\Installer
if exist %INSTALL_PATH% (

Becomes:

if exist C:\My App\Installer (

Which means:

If "C:\My" exists, run "App\Installer" with "(" as the command line argument.

You see the error because you have no folder named "App". Put quotes around the path to prevent this splitting.

Solution 2:

Save this as *.bat file and see differences

:: print echo command and its output
echo 1

:: does not print echo command just its output
@echo 2

:: print dir command but not its output
dir > null

:: does not print dir command nor its output
@dir c:\ > null

:: does not print echo (and all other commands) but print its output
@echo off
echo 3

@echo on
REM this comment will appear in console if 'echo off' was not set

@set /p pressedKey=Press any key to exit