Programming Question

[Erik Rude]

I do. They are incredibly good for some tasks. Tasks that would take 4 hours in a quick and dirty VBA app hacked by an apprentice can take mere minutes if you remember the DOS commands, thus saving the day. Now do you use the vi-editor?

[jcdmelo]

I do write BAT files - and have never gave up on them ever since my IBM PCJr. - once in a while to: - automate repetitive shell commands - setup a path - perform string or repetitive operations on a bunch of files which depends on a search in the current directory. To "kill the snake and show the stick" (a popular saying in Brazil which denotes "to show that you have really done it") here's a simple example: for /D %%i in (*) do dir /s "%%i" >> dirs.txt Julio Cezar

[jsc42]

I still use BAT files as they are straight forward and capable of some useful tricks. One of my recent applications had a GUI front end but the users wanted a batch interface to start / stop / pause / resume it remotely. Simple with batch files: start = single command line to run the application, others = single command line to post a message to the application's input queue (e.g. ECHO PAUSE >>%TEMP%\_applicationname__StatusChange.txt). Then all I had to do was to create shortcut desktop icons to run the batch files and they think that they have a button controlled interface.

[SkipSailors]

JCL R00lz!

Ship it!

[jsc42]

For several years, I was involved with helping at a programming competition run by one of Europe's foremost national computing organisations (name not disclosed for obvious reasons). We had the brightest and best teams from academia and professional companies competing in it. We never told the teams that our sophisticated testing, scoring, and marking system that compiled, ran, timed, and collated all of their competition entries was a single monolithic BAT file. Admittedly, it grew over the years as more languages and external dependencies were added to the scope of the competition, but it was still a BAT file.

[Isfeasachme]

Hey! My first job was repairing those things for the Dept of the Navy :) ... in 1992... in Nashville. Figure that out! LOL

[Isfeasachme]

I'll be interested to hear how I should be doing this... but I've got batch files sitting on remote servers that create a quick backup of existing code, deploy code from subversion and sync up secondary servers.

[Unused Account Safe to Delete]

Well, here in Cuba the whole process of grading the National Programming Contest for High School students is done using bat files. The last one I made for that earned me the nickname "batman".

[richard_k]

Actually, on Unisys mainframes it is called 'Work Flow Language' (WFL, or as everyone called it 'wiffle'). I wrote a lot of that in the mid 80s.

[Floydslips]

I still write an occasional batch file, although I use the newer .CMD file extension. For more advanced needs, I rely on WinBatch.

[Conan Callen]

Whateva does the job. My favorite has always been Kornshell. Powershell is cool, but seems to lack the elegance of some of the Unix Shells. .bat files are quick and easy, take very little setup/configuration. However, I emphisize with younger programmers, who want to use something new, or improve make thier skill set more competitive. Just remember that if you dont want to box yourself in (kill any oportunity for promotion), dont make it so complex that someone will never be albe to replace you.

[Derek Altamirano]

I still use .cmd files quite a bit (haven't done .bat's since moving to NT; I still use the term batch file, though I think the proper term for a .cmd is command file :-D). Although I am learning to use PowerShell more, I can still usually whip out a batch file much quicker, depending on what I am doing, though I expect that will change as I become more fluent in PS. I have written some pretty neat and complex batch scripts in recent years (man do I love that for command!).

[galumpa]

I'm 4 years out of the university and have only used a .bat file recently when I switched companies. Previously I used shell scripts.

[Earl Truss]

My first real program in my first real programming job was written in CDC 6000 assembler on two boxes of cards. I try to forget how I would have to make corrections to the cards and then read them back in again to test it. Oh, and yes, I still have a few BAT files that are in use. Don't write very many new ones much any more.

[Earl Truss]

Steven.M.Hunt wrote:

the government agency I work for (hint: we sent people to the Moon that one time) just turned off our last mainframe this month

I read about that. That was an IBM wasn't it? I used to work in Range Safety at the Cape on CDC Cyber 8xx-somethings. Are there any mainframes still use in the guv'ment any where?

[Steven M Hunt]

Yes we had IBMs, and we had ADABASE and NATURAL running on them. I'm not sure if there are any other agencies running them still, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are still out there. We haven't had any running here at the Cape for a while, but the last ones to get turned off were up in Huntsville. -- Steven

[Lost User]

Hey, Don't I know you? :) /invis;goto 10 500 516 500;slay auct

[galumpa]

Of course ;) and that is the script to slay the Auctioneer! hahaha I remember that!

[cpkilekofp]

I write .cmd files for use in SQL Server jobs, very useful for moving files back and forth and for calling bcp to force bulk imports into a process other than SQL Server (odd how that must work, but "the documentation says so so it must be true." ;)

[ClockMeister]

I don't write many but do occasionally still use it. -Max