In Windows/DOS batch files: pause This prints a nice “Press any key to continue . . . ” message Or, if you don’t want the “Press any key to continue . . .” message, do this instead: pause >nul
The most common ways to use the shutdown command are: shutdown -s — Shuts down. shutdown -r — Restarts. shutdown -l — Logs off. shutdown -h — Hibernates. Note: There is a common pitfall wherein users think -h means “help” (which it does for every other command-line program… except shutdown.exe, where it means “hibernate”). They … Read more
Enjoy: forfiles -p “C:\what\ever” -s -m *.* -d <number of days> -c “cmd /c del @path” See forfiles documentation for more details. For more goodies, refer to An A-Z Index of the Windows XP command line. If you don’t have forfiles installed on your machine, copy it from any Windows Server 2003 to your Windows XP machine at %WinDir%\system32\. … Read more
Use: echo hello echo: echo world
Use: call msbuild.bat call unit-tests.bat call deploy.bat When not using CALL, the current batch file stops and the called batch file starts executing. It’s a peculiar behavior dating back to the early MS-DOS days.
I’m very surprised no one has mentioned: C:\> timeout 5 N.B. Please note however (thanks Dan!) that timeout 5 means: Sleep anywhere between 4 and 5 seconds This can be verified empirically by putting the following into a batch file, running it repeatedly and calculating the time differences between the first and second echos: @echo … Read more
From this news group posting by Mark Zbikowski himself: The differences between .CMD and .BAT as far as CMD.EXE is concerned are: With extensions enabled, PATH/APPEND/PROMPT/SET/ASSOC in .CMD files will set ERRORLEVEL regardless of error. .BAT sets ERRORLEVEL only on errors. In other words, if ERRORLEVEL is set to non-0 and then you run one … Read more
You can break up long lines with the caret ^ as long as you remember that the caret and the newline following it are completely removed. So, if there should be a space where you’re breaking the line, include a space. (More on that below.) Example: copy file1.txt file2.txt would be written as: copy file1.txt^ … Read more
Use :: or REM :: commenttttttttttt REM commenttttttttttt BUT (as people noted): if they are not in the beginning of line, then add & character: your commands here & :: commenttttttttttt Inside nested parts (IF/ELSE, FOR loops, etc…) :: should be followed with normal line, otherwise it gives error (use REM there). :: may also … Read more
Calling for /? in the command-line gives help about this syntax (which can be used outside FOR, too, this is just the place where help can be found). In addition, substitution of FOR variable references has been enhanced. You can now use the following optional syntax: %~I – expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (“) … Read more