Vrftjkry

On Bash, I can use a subshell to fill the result of one command into the next:

$ echo $(sub-command args)

and if $(sub-command args) wrote foo to standard out, then the above command would be equivalent to:

$ echo foo

Does Windows 7 have a way to do this in cmd.exe?

The reason I want to do this is so I can easily run executables from npm's installation directory without having that directory on my path:

$ $(npm bin)/grunt build

as they already stated in the comments, there is no native way of doing this with cmd. However there is a hack that you may use for your case (as npm bin only returns one line):

for /F "tokens=*" %n IN ('npm bin') DO @(%ngrunt build)

or inside a batch file you have to duplicate the %:

for /F "tokens=*" %%n IN ('npm bin') DO @(%%ngrunt build)

Alternatives

Batch

You could generate a script that receives the parameter and runs the command, something like

:: Takes the parameters and send to npm bin output

for /f "tokens=*" %%n in ('npm bin') do @(%%n%1 %2 %3 %4 %5)

Save it as npmbin.cmd in your path, then you could run:

npmbin.cmd grunt build

Powershell

For your case, you should be able to invoke it through powershell using the invoke-expression cmdlet:

iex "$(npm bin)grunt build"

I don't have npm on me right now, but I tested with other program and it looks like it would work.

Environment Variable

Anyway, I think the previous are very complicated "solutions", while you only want to simplify your command. I was wondering if you could create a global variable, say NPMBIN and then use it for your commands:

%NPMBIN%grunt build

To extend this you could set up a task to set it programatically for your user (or eventually the computer) using setx, some batch like:

for /f "tokens=*" %%n in ('npm bin') do @(setx NPMBIN %%n)

Hope it helps. Regards