This tip was stimulated by a question from Donavan about the previous tip. When you use the command line, the output is normally sent to the screen. If you’re a keyboard person, a lot of things can be accomplished simply using the command line. For example, there are a few easy-to-use methods for. Write console text to a file (Windows cmd.exe). Writing directly from the Windows command line to a file might not be something you need to do very often. When you type a command on the Windows command line, the output from the command is displayed in the command prompt window. For some commands, the output c. How To Write A Simple Batch (.bat) File. Written by Paul Bozzay March 24. The command line lets you communicate directly with your computer and instruct it to. How to Use the Command Prompt and Write in Batch Language. To start you are going to need to have two programs open. One of them is notepad. You can access it by. The Command Line in Windows: Batch file basics. Batch files or scripts are small easy- to- write. They can be simple enough that. Systems administrators and power users are well aware of the utility of. PC user is generally unacquainted with them or. This. is unfortunate since it means that many are foregoing the use of a powerful. Although batch files can. In this article. I will introduce the batch file and discuss some uncomplicated examples that make basic. What is a batch file? These are simple text files containing some. These files have the special extension BAT or CMD. Files of this type are. In Windows XP/ Vista the. The large assortment of. Windows XP/Vista/7 makes batch files a powerful. Constructing a batch file consists of nothing more than opening any text. Notepad. entering some lines containing commands, and saving the file with an extension. BAT or CMD. (The CMD extension is limited to newer Windows systems and is. Windows 9x/Me systems. In Windows XP, Vista, and 7 there is little. Don't use Wordpad or Word unless. The commands. themselves are often quite simple and there is no need to learn a programming. Those who wish can explore the intricacies that are available with. I will confine the discussion to some straightforward. The focus will be on saving time and effort. Running a batch file is a simple matter of clicking on it. Batch files can. also be run in a command prompt or the Start- Run line. In. that case, the full path name must be used unless the file's path is in the path. Constructing a batch file. In the following discussion it is assumed that the Introductory page. Commands have been read. The first line in a batch file often consists of this command @echo off. By. default, a batch file will display its commands as it runs. The. purpose of this first command is to turn off this display. The command "echo. The "at" sign "@" in front makes the command. This nuance isn't really all that important in the. I mention it because it is often seen in scripts. The scripts. we will discuss are very brief and omitting. However, as a matter. Our first batch file example is going to list all the files in a folder. We will use the directory command "dir" that. Open Notepad and enter the line "@echo off" (without. Next enter another line dir. C: \Program Files" > C: \list_of_program_files. I'm. assuming that your Program Files folder is on the C: drive). This will. give us the two- line file @echo offdir. C: \Program Files" > C: \list_of_program_files. Now save. this two- line file as "listprograms. Be sure that Notepad is saving as "All files" and. See the figure below. Three important points are illustrated in the example script. Note that. complete paths are used for files including the drive letter. Also note. the quotes around "C: \Program Files". Paths must be quoted whenever. Finally note the redirection. All that has to be done to use the file. A file C: \list_of_program_files. A more general version with arguments. The file that we have been discussing is limited to listing one particular. However, it is easy. Batch files can use arguments or data that is. The process makes use of placeholders of the form. These are replaced in the script by our input data. This type. of situation cannot be clicked directly but should be run in a command. The new batch file would be@echo offdir %1 >. Notepad and save as "makelist. To run the file, open. Now. you have a little program that will list the contents of a folder whenever. If you want a list of all the subfolders as well, use the command dir. If you want a list that only includes files of a certain. MP3 files for example, use dir %1\*. The. line above illustrates the use of the wildcard "*". The ability. to use wildcards greatly enhances the power of batch files. Life will be easier if you put all batch scripts in a folder that is. The Rem statement. Very often batch files contain lines that start with "Rem". This is a way. to enter comments and documentation. The computer ignores anything. Rem. For batch files of any complexity, comments. Note that the command interpreter actually reads Rem statements so using too many can slow down execution of a script. More examples. Following the discussion on another page, it. To create. a very simple backup script, use xcopy. The code might be xcopy %1 %2 /d /s This will update all files. In practice, a useful backup. Again following previous discussion of. TMP might contain del %1\*. Prompting for user input. You can also interact with a user and ask that data be entered. The old DOS had a "Choice" command for very limited interaction but that has been superseded in Windows XP/Vista by the more versatile "set /p". The syntax is: set /p variable= [string] "Variable" is the name of the variable that will be assigned to the data that you want the user to input. String" is the message that the user will see as a prompt. If desired, "string" can be omitted. Here is an example that asks the user to enter his or her name: set /p name= What is your name? This will create a variable %name% whose value is whatever the user enters. Note that the user must press the "Enter' key after typing the input.(The "Choice" command has returned as a more powerful version in Vista.) Further reading. These are simple examples and this page does not pretend to explain everything. The idea is to show how simple they are and to intrigue. Even more powerful batch files can be constructed with the addition of simple decision making and methods of doing the same thing many times. Branching with "If" and "Goto" are discussed next ; using "For" to do repetitive tasks is considered on a third page. Batch files are discussed in. Windows, at numerous Web sites and at this Microsoft. Even if you do not want to write them, there are many already available. This page at. a sister site lists a number of sources.
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