Programming Question

[Rajesh Krishnamoorthy]

There are lot :) Mostly to copy files from FTP

[Atique Rahman]

Me too have adopted powershell. It's funny that my first fun with computers started with batch files.. It's also funny how I came to computer science growing up in a remote country side area where a computer was not available within the perimeter of 7 km. I collected a book of norton which introduced me to computers.. I was just imagining how computers look like.. how different components work and how I will deal with this magnificent invention if I stand face to face. :) A year later I bought a book of DOS and my .bat started.

[Locust2000]

I do sometimes. When you want to push out a few commands to a batch of XP PC's through LogMeIn Central it's hard to beat a .bat file for ease, simplicity and compatability(powershell not always installed).

[Riaan Booyzen]

I still find use and write one once a week or so just on my dev machine. I use powershell on the servers.

[MustrumRidcully]

I still use them as part of scripting the installation builder process. (That process also uses Shell Scripts on Linux and Mac, ANT and - this is really shameful ;) - NSIS) I've learned a lot of magic about .bat files that I never expected them to be able to do!

[Pete B37]

I still use them because I couldn't be bothered (win32) to get eclipse to find the FLTK libraries to build under mingw/GCC so I wrote a build script, as I might in Bash under linux so every time I add a source, I have to add a another line and add entry to linker

[Member 2053006]

Three days ago. Batch file to delete WoW cache before starting the game. End of last month - batch file for running my entry into Facebook Hacker Cup (failed!) <----- Geek!

[smcnulty2000]

Writing them for a current job. I had to re-learn some things. Although I'm using the cmd extension instead of .bat. There is a need to use something that acts as glue in a complex system. In this case it had to be something that would be easy to describe in documentation to people downstream and that I could be sure would work in all the places I need it. Some of them are run from inside of T-SQL. Others are run on schedule. I have one that monitors a set of internal web sites and looks for key words to see if they are up or not. Another that's looking for a change in a particular directory. Supposedly I'll figure out how to do all this with power shell one day but for now I'm using batch files.

_____________________________ Give a man a mug, he drinks for a day. Teach a man to mug... The difference between an ostrich and the average voter is where they stick their heads.

[tsyuan02231]

still using it ^^

[Magnamus]

I'm still working in CP/M

[CHill60]

I'd be lost without them (well our systems would be). Hmm... hadn't realised how much of a dinosaur I am until I just glanced at my taskbar and spotted two minimised dos boxes CMD windows.

[sweMesSer]

Though I'm still young (well pretty young at least, reaching in on 30). I have written some in order to get DOS to do things for me. However, I can't really say I have utilized them in the last 10 years or so. Nowadays I usually create some command prompt-exe or some graphical windows forms/WPF-tool. This since it makes it easier to improve and extend into something useful that other people can use. What do you use .bat-files for and why do that instead of a program?

[Robert Chafer]

I still use batch files. I used one yesterday to rename a large group of files. I processed file filenames with a Notepad++ macro and 'massaged' them into a set of copy commands (copied to a safe location). We still use them quite a lot for controlling the build process of our compiler...

[torst3n]

23 and writing them bats, boss. mainly cause I think it's faster then ps scripting and reason is cause I usually need to check if a task is done before I start another one.

[KLPounds]

due to the awkward security settings at my work, PS scripts are blocked, WSH scripting is hit or miss, but I can batch script till the screen turns blue. Sometimes it's just the quick and dirty tool for the job. Guess I'm just of the right era as I was a DOS mule as a child learning computers. ASCI based menu systems and command prompt was how my dad rolled. All that point and click and eye candy stuff was for my angsty teenage years.

[Wartickler]

We use them a lot in SharePoint production deployments. Once our app is ready for prod we package the PS in bat files so the sys admins can just double-click and install.

[Josh Riedmiller]

I prefer to use PERL to do the heavy stuff but almost always wrap a batch file around it to pass arguments.

[reilly96]

If by .bat files you mean .cmd files I write and use them all the time

[PRISMAY]

I still use them quite a bit although I use the .cmd files. ;) I use them from anything like running automated encoding on multiple video files to running automated deployment projects on our servers. I am, however, slowly moving towards WSH just because I can use c# but it'll be a while before I'm there and I don't see ever being weaned competely off of the command prompt as it offers too many handy and quick utillities. :) Just another old fogie I guess.

------- PRISMAY

[RubberSideDown]

Been trolling for a while; first post (be gentle). I'm 30 and am a HUGE fan of .bat. I manage a small rogue IT shop full of developers WAY smarter & more talented than I'll ever be, but once in a blue moon I stick them with a task & they fire up all sort of fancy VB & other stuff I don't understand only to end up with a program that has more lines than I want to read & is typically less reliable! Long live the DOS (ok fine... command prompt). TIP: .bat works REALLY well in SSIS packages; I assume shell does too, but I haven't found a need to venture outside my comfort zone.