Programming Question

[RDSchaefer]

I do! Although I use the .CMD extension now.

[StephenPhillips]

I'd consider myself to be in the young 'un category - several months out of university - but I still have uses for .bat files. Most often, I feel the need to have external libraries (Boost, GLFW and SDL being most common) in one place. So to keep them self-contained and properly referenced in my projects, I have .bat files in their respective folders which simply state

setx BOOST_DIR %CD%

or equivalent thereof. Saves me the effort of dealing with changes when migrating to different workstations, and keeps my projects up to date when the libraries are updated. Naturally this only works for systems where I'm allowed to set environment variables in this manner, but in my naive experience it has served me well thus far.

Sometimes a fist in the face says more than a thousand honeyed words.

[englebart]

bat/cmd + SendTo shortcuts + GNU utils (sed/grep) One pet peeve with Win7 is that the SendTo folder no longer supports cascading menus via simple folders/directories.

[Dominic Amann]

Unless you want the script to be read by the 32 (or even 16) bit interpreter, why wouldn't you write .cmd files instead? Learn bash, and your .cmd skills will improve (and you will start being annoyed at Windows script clumsiness).

[bonjedward]

They're useful for calling other programs. For example here if perl is not in the PATH on all PCs - if it is, that's the one to use, but if not, try a known location: perl c:\Offline\Computer\GMobileSubsets\scripts\perl\fetch.pl HNG %1 %2 if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto tryagain exit pause :tryagain C:\perl\bin\perl c:\Offline\Computer\GMobileSubsets\scripts\perl\fetch.pl HNG %1 %2 if ERRORLEVEL 1 goto err exit pause :err pause >nul Perl error! Contact IT. Press any key (I always have pause after exit, so I can quickly add REM in front of exit when testing The same applies in a mixed 32/64 bit environment: C:\Program Files (x86)\ or C:\Program Files\ Also, when calling sequences of taskkill, file copy/delete, etc - you can put a shortcut on the desktop to it. Easier than remembering a long list of services to be restarted in a particular order, etc. Useful for colleagues if your not available - "just log in to the server and click on the shortcut" Also, on Windows 7, some users need local administrator rights to run taskkill, etc, but need their own identity when accessing network files. Create an exe file to run a bat file as admin, but use it only on those batfiles requiring it: C:\Offline\Computer\GMobileSubsets\sw\runaLocalAdmin.exe C:\Offline\Computer\GMobileSubsets\scripts\bat\stopall_reqadmin.bat

[Thomas Vanderhoof]

I'm 36 and use .bat files to backup data in certain folders using robo copy commands on a scheduled task. Why pay for backup programs when you can make a quick script for free.

[Member 4551201]

Do you still use Edlin? ;)

[User 8634007]

I do it daily! Good Ole'bats! I hard code all internet pages and have a slick program built in access that creates the bat and ftp to do all of my bidding. Its safer, cleaner, fast and far better than drag and drop or any other method I can find for ftping. The access programs archives and does just about evrything else too. But... in computer years, I too am an "Old fogie." It's sort of odd when you have been programming vb longer than some of young'ns who are programming today have been alive, and that says nothing of having worked the basic "Basic". But hey don't let the gray hair fool you, I can still keep up with the best of them! hmmm... So I hear through the grape vine that you were "the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post"

[GI_Giorgio]

Do not feel alone! we are a bunch of programmers that we use bat files to do daily tasks (stored procedures por instance). And not just in DOS also in UNIX... everything to do the job! Greatings @GI_Giorgio

[samuel adams]

Looks like there are a lot of old fogies here:) I don't write as many as I used to, but there are cases where a bat file is quicker/easier to write and anyone can maintain. It also keeps me from having to rewrite all the dos commands that already exist. If microsoft ever gets rid of the command line, I'm switching to Linux.

[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.

[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.

[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".

[Floydslips]

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