Programming Question
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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
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.
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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
I prefer to use PERL to do the heavy stuff but almost always wrap a batch file around it to pass arguments.
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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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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
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
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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
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.
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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
I am currently writing them at my new job. Mainly they are small things that help me with what I am doing instead of having to manually delete logs. I also wrote them at my old job to do the following: Delete a folder on the Build Server, Get Latest Code, Build the code, and then deploy it.
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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.
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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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
Recently wrote some .bat files to automate a nightly build. I know there may be better tools for such tasks, but I still remember bits of DOS from my youth, and therefore can't be bothered to learn another script language. Over the decades I've used various script languages, starting from (C=ommodore) Basic, over BS 2000, Amiga-DOS, Unix sh and bsh, MS-DOS, and a few others, but of these I've only used MS-DOS over the past years. Not because it's so good, but simply because that way I don't need to learn yet another script language :)
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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
Yes Dave, but thenI'm another old fart! I use them to ease deployment of new application versions without kicking users out. I drop the new version in the folder, update the BAT file and users pick up the new version on next launch. I also use them to copy new versions to remote sites using a control text file to mark installation (we have lots of sites with slow or unreliable radio links). Now, in the good old days of DOS, I had complete menuing systems running off of BAT files! :-D Phil
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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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
I still do, just to make my job easier. I've always liked them since I developed my own system with my father's TRS-80 Model I. Setup so, the OS booted and started up BASIC to run games or anything else automatically. They didn't have anything like that long ago... you had to type everything by hand. Now I mainly use it to call my apps to process files and use the batch file to copy the file to the final destination. Multiple projects that interconnect you know. :laugh: :laugh:
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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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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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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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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
At my internship, I was recently tasked with automating backups for a 2003 server. The goal was to do it preferably for free, of course ;) I hadn't a need to create a batch file in years, but knew I could get it done. The first batch file uses ntbackup for regular data. The second one does a backup of SQL data by calling TSQL files (.sql) generated in MS SQL Server Management Studio. This allows the SQL server to not have to be shut down to do backups. The third one date-stamps and copies the backup files to other locations. Each batch file is scheduled to run using the built-in Task Scheduler. Free and fun!
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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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Like Pete, I use some bat files, but power shell is the way to go.
Panic, Chaos, Destruction. My work here is done. Drink. Get drunk. Fall over - P O'H OK, I will win to day or my name isn't Ethel Crudacre! - DD Ethel Crudacre I cannot live by bread alone. Bacon and ketchup are needed as well. - Trollslayer Have a bit more patience with newbies. Of course some of them act dumb - they're often *students*, for heaven's sake - Terry Pratchett
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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
We use bat files for many applications right now. You are not alone. We have gotten away from the complex bat files we used to have, and now mostly we use them to call exe's and handle a bad return code by sending an email from a vbscript. We have a scheduling tool, but it has many bugs so we are thinking of going back to windows scheduler where the scheduled task is a call to a bat file.
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A makefile is nothing more than a batch file with a command line to call the compiler for each source file, then one or more command lines calling the linker and perhaps some commands to deploy or copy the results. An IDE usually lets you edit all kinds of compiler and linker options and then generates the makefile from the contents of your project and those options. Or you can simply write the makefile yourself with any simple editor like wordpad. You just have to know how to call the compiler and linker and what options and parameters your compiler needs or supports. It's just like writing command lines in the console. The makefile only saves you from typing all this every time you want to build your project. I guess, all this should be documented in the compiler's and linker's documentation. Edit: Usually the compiler includes some tool to process the makefile. My simple C compiler for old 8 bit machines does not, so I use plain vanilla .BAT files, which does not really make much of a difference. Whenever I want to build my project, I simply call something like 'make.bat' at the command line and look what kind of results I get in the in the console. Edit^2: I just dug this[^] out in MSDN. It describes how to build from the command line with makefiles and NMAKE. NMAKE is a little more powerful than a simple batch and the commands are not simple command lines anymore, but it's still very much the same idea.
I'm invincible, I can't be vinced
NMake can be downloaded from the MSDN directly if you have a 32bit OS. If you have 64bit, then that 16bit NMake download will not run! You have to install the Express Edition or higher of Visual C++ and find it in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin there is another file called nmakeui.dll at C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\VC\bin\1033 but I didn't use it. Why would I go to the trouble? Perl scripts, not wholelly related to .BAT, but a script nonetheless - mine tend to be 20K to 200K per file! On a 64bit Windows OS with no 16bit support like Win7: to install CPAN modules (type cpan at a dos prompt after installing ActiveState Perl), you need Perl, MingW and MSys for the compiler, and NMake. This was fine till we upgraded - well, downgraded my laptop since this $3k Elitebook crashes constantly - to 64bit. I was stuck without the modules and had to figure out a way to get NMake. My Macbook Pro will be here today I hope, btw. Can't wait to get Windows 7 installed on it! Not an Apple fanboi, but I doubt I am going to freeze, BSOD or put up with random sticking letter or key of the day issues...
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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
I do! Although I use the .CMD extension now.
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Right: we young people just write a bunch of shell scripts or awk ones.
Veni, vidi, vici.
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.