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Programming Question

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  • D Dalek Dave

    Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

    --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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    ClockMeister
    wrote on last edited by
    #128

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

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    • D Dalek Dave

      It's a shame Henry isn't here He could tell us of his days poking holes in cards!

      --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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      ClockMeister
      wrote on last edited by
      #129

      Dalek Dave wrote:

      It's a shame Henry isn't here
       
      He could tell us of his days poking holes in cards!

      OK, since he's not here then I'll tell you. I used to write FORTRAN IV programs when at GA Tech back in 1976. We used IBM 029 and 026 keypunch units to build our deck which we then fed into a Cyber-74 for compile/run. The output would come out 10 to 30 minutes later on the express printer in the other room. Lather, rinse and repeat. -Max :)

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      • R richard_k

        Heh.. first job at a large computer firm I had was writing job decks and algol programs at Unisys. With punch cards! Cards were on their way out when I did this.. but you could still find folks with large card decks on their desks.

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        Lauren Lilly
        wrote on last edited by
        #130

        Now I feel old. My first job was purely punch cards. (1977 Burroughs minicomputers)

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        • D Dalek Dave

          Yes Pete, but alas you are venerable and aged, like me. I bet them young whippersnappers don't!

          --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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          msvbdev
          wrote on last edited by
          #131

          I'm 16 and I still like the command-line better than GUIs for a lot of things :) I don't know how to do some of the advanced shell programming things, but I do write .BATs for efficiency (for example, cding to very long directories to execute programs with complicated arguments)

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          • D Dalek Dave

            Yes Pete, but alas you are venerable and aged, like me. I bet them young whippersnappers don't!

            --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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            Redsn0w10
            wrote on last edited by
            #132

            Dalek, I'm only 14 and I use Batch files. I actually want to use MS-DOS in a virtual machine. Justin

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            • D Dalek Dave

              Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

              --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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              fjancic
              wrote on last edited by
              #133

              Automating repetitive tasks like running update sql scripts on several network instances or updating backups and ftp servers. They are flexible and quick to write and use.

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              • D Dalek Dave

                Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                SenseiJae
                wrote on last edited by
                #134

                I occasionally will throw one down to automate a tedious task. Awesome skill to have.

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                • D Dalek Dave

                  Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                  --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                  48kGeneration
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #135

                  I do, and it is still very usefull. When things go "wrong", there is nothing like a command prompt and some .bat files to fix things fast. :) Long live the knowledge!

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                  • D Dalek Dave

                    Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                    --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                    Yortw
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #136

                    I'm only 30ish, and I still write the occasional .bat file, but not many. Perhaps I'm just a younger dinosaur :laugh:

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                    • D Dalek Dave

                      Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                      --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                      Randy Maxwell
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #137

                      Please add my vote for .BAT and .CMD files for at least these 2 reasons: 1) The runtime environment already exists with Windows, OS/2, DOS 2) Other team members can easily see what is going on and modify/improve the batch code Lots of samples found on web... #2 satisfies computer programming (communication) aspect: another human WILL read your code sometime and sharing early and publicly and in a way that allows more team members to empower themselves by modifying code to suit their needs seems like a better practice to me. Ex: Automated Testing; Original defect happened 1 of 4 tries manually. Root cause is somewhere in MS Win OS 64 bit networking layer behind a COM interface. So used .bat file to: run ipconfig and capture to .txt file run find to see if the expected IP address is present stop running batch file if IP not found else either Enable or Disable NIC device and reboot to try to reproduce again Since I could not fix the MS Win OS 64 bit networking code, I "hardened" the app code side with extra functionality checking even though COM interfaces reported S_OK and added a handler for recoverable errors. After incremental "hardening" the error rate went down to 1 of 1000 or more. Letting the batch file run automatically overnight and (later) over the weekend helped find even more subtle defects (places to harden) as well. Later on I used variations to do stress testing for app memory and handle leaks. Members of the Test team would also use/modify for tests. Hope this helps!

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                      • D Dalek Dave

                        Yes Pete, but alas you are venerable and aged, like me. I bet them young whippersnappers don't!

                        --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                        Peter Hawke
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #138

                        Actually I am 14 and I wrote one to start defraggler and CCleaner when my computer starts up. But I didn't know that the startup folder only starts exe files instead of BAT files. So know I just run it so I don't have to start both of them manually

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                        • D Dalek Dave

                          Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                          --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                          Jwalant Natvarlal Soneji
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #139

                          Dalek Dave wrote:

                          Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files?

                          I am admitting that I write batch scripts... :(

                          Regards, Jwalant Natvarlal Soneji

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                          • D Dalek Dave

                            It's a shame Henry isn't here He could tell us of his days poking holes in cards!

                            --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                            KP Lee
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #140

                            Gee, I never poked a hole in a card, :-D I sat at a massive mixture of devices and desk top with a keyboard. I poked a key, the device made a crunching sound, the card slightly moved and I either repeated or poked something else to release the card punched full of holes, which was pushed into a stack of cards. At the University, I also sat at something the size of the old typewriters that spat out a ribbon of paper. Usually over 10 feet long, imagine the swearing when the ribbon ripped. I can't remember how long the boot tape was, it took about 5 minutes to load in the machine.

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                            • S Steven M Hunt

                              Same here, I'm a young guy and I just wrapped up writing some serious bat files to replace the old mainframe JCL we had hanging around; the government agency I work for (hint: we sent people to the Moon that one time) just turned off our last mainframe this month. -- Steven

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                              KP Lee
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #141

                              Personally, I count orbiting the moon as going to the moon. Granted, a lot less tricky than landing on it, but when was the last time you got on a bus that orbited the moon? :) Also, personally, I think 13 proved to be a VERY lucky number considering no-one died.

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                              • D Dalek Dave

                                Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                                --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                                KP Lee
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #142

                                I'm an old fogy(sp?) and still use it. I'm embarrassed to admit that I don't know powershell, so it looks like dos to me. (Unless I'm clueless what the command is doing.) I've looked at (worked with, and when it doesn't work, modify) deployment scripts that heavily used dos.

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                                • D Dalek Dave

                                  Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                                  --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                                  twentyfirstcenturyslave
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #143

                                  I write them at work to copy files that have to be copied from one place to another routinely. Since I can't write real code at work any more(ever since the overseers came)I have to be satisfied with DOS scripts.

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                                  • R richard_k

                                    Heh.. first job at a large computer firm I had was writing job decks and algol programs at Unisys. With punch cards! Cards were on their way out when I did this.. but you could still find folks with large card decks on their desks.

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                                    User 8183175
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #144

                                    Ever drop one of those decks and screw up the jcl sequences. I did, not fun. thankfully they were numbered and I was able to reassemble it using an old mechanical sorter. Any body remember those ? Wrote and used a .bat file the other day to clean up a bunch of MSIlog files 20K worth (thank you microsoft).

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                                    • D Dalek Dave

                                      Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                                      --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                                      FEQ
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #145

                                      They are still very useful for running Java programs in windows. The .bat file lets you setup JVM options and directives as well as loading additional libraries and command line arguments. But then again, I am also a baby boomer.

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                                      • D Dalek Dave

                                        Who (apart from my good self) still writes .bat files? Are they common or am I one of the old fogies that still employs his DOS knowledge?

                                        --------------------------------- I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave CCC Link[^] English League Tables - Live

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                                        Floodlight
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #146

                                        I still write .bat files. I do alot of command line FTP crap and batch files are just the thing :)

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                                        • U User 8183175

                                          Ever drop one of those decks and screw up the jcl sequences. I did, not fun. thankfully they were numbered and I was able to reassemble it using an old mechanical sorter. Any body remember those ? Wrote and used a .bat file the other day to clean up a bunch of MSIlog files 20K worth (thank you microsoft).

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                                          ProfessorMetal
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #147

                                          LOL We used punch cards on an IBM mainframe when I was in college(MANY moons ago). I had a 500 line Assembly program and dropped the deck. Took me hours to get all the cards back in order. It wasn't funny then but it is now. :laugh:

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