http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~ak621/DOS/BatBasic.html

http://home.att.net/~gobruen/progs/dos_batch/dos_batch.html

You could also assign command line parameters to the variables:

The command line usually sees the space as a parameter delimiter, use double quotes " to make it ingore the spaces: test.bat "Joe Smith" "1 Main Street" "Helltown".
Something important to remember about SET, it actaully creates a variable name in the file So if you enter SET NAME=Joe on the command line or in a batch file and then go to the command line and enter ECHO %NAME% the response will be Joe. Entering SET with no parameters will also show the whole list of SET variables. These will be erased when you reboot.

Most GUI programs have some kind of command line support which means you may automate their operation through batch files. For example, DOS does not have a built-in email sending function like UNIX. However, using an installed email program like Outlook, you may "force feed" the program on the command line. Outlook examples:outlook /c ipm.note will open a blank email, outlook /c ipm.note /m msmith@yahoo.com will open a blank email with the indicated address, outlook /c ipm.note /a myfile.doc attaches a file. More outlook switches, outlook programming.

An example using command line with winzip.

The Windows Installation Catch-22
You have a new computer with a unformated hard drive, or a drive with only DOS loaded. You want to load Windows from a CD, but you can"t see the CD ROM from the DOS prompt. This is messy and can be screwed-up easily, luckily mistakes on this don"t cause permanent damage. If you"re lucky the CD ROM you have came with an installation disk(on floppy, of course). Putting this disk in and running the INSTALL.EXE or SETUP.EXE will install the drivers for you and alter the system files so you can load Windows from the CD ROM(Linux, by the way, has no problem with this!). If there is no INSTALL.EXE on the disk, you will have to edit lines in two files on your Windows 95 Boot/Install floppy disk. These files are: CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT. Open these files for editing are look for lines that look like these:

And

They may or may not be REMed out. You will need to change the "/D:OEMCD001" part of these lines to reflect the CD ROM that you have. For example if you have a Memorex it might be "/D:MSCD001". But be sure, check any manuals you might have lying around. If not, go to the manufacturer"s website and down load the installation files. You will also need to figure out which drive letter it will be. If you only have on hard disk, it will be "D:" as in "/D:MSCD001," if you have two hard drives, or your drive is in several partitions, it might be "E:" or "F:". So then the line would be "/E:MSCD001" or "/F:MSCD001"

The Final line in CONFIG.SYS might be like this:

Commandline Arguements {%x}

Variables can be inserted into a batch structure in the form of command line arguements. These are in the form %1, %2, etc. To populate the variables, type the desired values after the batch file name when executing it.

DOS Environment Variable Names {%nn%}

DOS environment variables also can be used as variables in batch files. For example:

COPY %windir%\filename a:

Where does one get a list of DOS environment variables? I have never found a comprehensive list; but a partial but lengthy list of existing environment variables can be gotten by typing SET at a command prompt.

And here’s the really cool part! You can make them up as you go along, and assign them as you wish (as long as you don’t grab one that has a legitimate assigned value, such as, say, %windir%, the Windows directory name!). Pick a name, populate it with the SET command by any means known to you (including having one batch file run a process that includes setting one, and then another batch file using it), then use it by placing the name between flanking % signs. Environment variables remain until overwritten, or until a reboot. (If you set them in a DOS window, they will end when that session is closed.)

If you precede an environment variable setting with the SETLOCAL command (on a line of its own), then environment variable changes are local to the batch file. They do not exist for any other process and they do not survive the completion of the batch file’s execution. You can turn this setting off by issuing an ENDLOCAL command later in the batch file.

Silly example: To change the current logged drive to D:, do the following:

SET GONEXT=D:
%GONEXT%

More practical example: You want to copy a file to the desktop of each user the next time they log into Windows. Each user logs into a different user profile, and the Desktop folder is in a unique location for each user. (The folder name will, of course, vary on non-English versions of Windows.) For a file called MYFILE.TXT, you can do this as follows on Windows 2000 or XP computers by using an environment variable %userprofile% which gives the path to the root of a given user’s profile:

COPY MYFILE.TXT %userprofile%\Desktop

START Command

The START command can launch a Windows program either by specifying the program name (and its command-line parameters), or by specifying a data file name that is associated with a particular program (one that would automatically launch if you clicked on it in Windows).

For example, if you have NOTEPAD.EXE associated with all TXT files, then you could open the file SOME.TXT in any of the following four ways:

NOTEPAD SOME.TXT
SOME.TXT
START NOTEPAD.EXE SOME.TXT
START SOME.TXT

Why use one or the other? Well, sometimes you may have to use one particular form to get a result — depending, for example, on how the particular program is coded. Though the first form usually will work, you may want, for example, to write a more general batch file to open any particular program and associated file — without knowing what the requirements of all such files might be. You could, then, write a general batch file line such as START %1% %2%.

One particular use of the START command is to launch the default browser and go directly to a URL, for example: START http://google.com

You may use any of four command line parameters with the START command. These go after the word START, but before the program name:

/minimized or /m
/maximized or /max
/restored or /r
/wait or /w

The first three determine the screen status in which the program opens. The last one forces the batch file to halt processing until the called program has finished executing. (This can be useful, for example, if you are loading multiple items in your windows Startup folder, and the nature of the programs require that one be finished before the next starts loading. Put them all in a single batch file, using the /wait parameter, and only put a shortcut to the batch file in the Startup folder.) Command line parameters of the START command can be combined in a single line. Example:

START /max /wait NOTEPAD.EXE SOME.TXT

BATCH FILE COMMANDS
Simple programming commands in a batch environment
Revised October 14, 2008
Click here to refresh this page & its menu bar.

Yeah, yeah, I know that many people think batch files are mostly things of the past. Sometimes, though, a well-conceived batch file is just the thing to automate the job you want to do.

I am not going to cover all the theory and practice of batch files from the ground up. Any good book on DOS (now found in the Antiquities section of your local library <g>), and many of the best on Windows, will have a section on batch files. Simply put, a batch file is a plaintext file with a name ending in .BAT. In its simplest form, it contains a series of commands that could be executed from a command prompt (system prompt). The batch file simply autoexecutes them for you. (In fact, AUTOEXEC.BAT is the best known, and most widely used, batch file.) To execute a batch file, type its name at a command prompt, or execute a Windows shortcut that does the same thing.

The simplest idea of how to write a batch file is: Figure out how you would type the commands at a DOS prompt, then type them, one per line, in a text file — and you’ve written your batch file.

However, there are also more sophisticated batch file structures, using simple programming commands built into the batch structure. This article summarizes the most important of these.

IF and IF NOT Commands

There are three variations of the IF and IF NOT commands.

• IF EXIST: Execute the commandline only if a particular file exists:

  IF EXIST some.txt COPY c:/some.dll %windir%/SYSTEM/some.dll

• Compare two text strings, and execute the commandline only if they are identical.

  IF %HostWinBootDrv%==C SET WinDir=C:\WINDOWS

• Error testing: Check the exit code of the most recently run program. If it is equal to or greater than the number specified, execute the command:

  IF ERRORLEVEL 4 ERASE trashfile.tmp /P

GOTO Command

You can set a label in a batch file by beginning a line with a colon. You can then go directly to that label with the GOTO command. The GOTO command searches both forward and backward in the batch file; that is, it simply goes to the label location, regardless of where it is in the file.

For example, in my batch file for removing the Happy99 virus, UNHAPPY.BAT, the following code was used to make sure a file was not deleted unless the original form of it (backed up by the virus under the name WSOCK32.SKA) is present:

IF NOT EXIST WSOCK32.SKA GOTO SavedIt
DEL WSOCK32.DLL
RENAME WSOCK32.SKA WSOCK32.DLL
:SavedIt

FOR Command

The syntax for this command is: FOR variable in (set list) DO command

The variable must be in the form of one alphabetic character preceeded by %%; e.g., %%v.

NOTE: The %% is necessary because this is in a batch file which, otherwise, would give a special meaning to a single %. However, if you run the FOR command outside of a batch file, simply from the system prompt, just use a single % in the variable name. (Tip from Steve Wisdom)

The set list is enclosed within parentheses. These values will be assigned to the variable successively. You can use any text enclosed in quotes, batch file commandline parameters, environment variables, or DOS file wildcard expressions.

The command can be any valid command that otherwise could be entered into the batch file as a line of its own. example:

FOR %%D in (SYSTEM, COMMAND, SHELLNEW, "Start Menu") DO DIR "%windir%\%%D" /W

Menu Creation

Sometimes you may want to let a batch file branch one way or another based on user input. This is especially helpful when you have several related batch processes and would like to combine them into a single application.

Back in DOS days, a common approach was to construct menus with multiple batch files. For example, you could create one batch file called MENU.BAT that ed the menu (a series of text lines), inviting a user to type a 1, 2, 3, etc. (or A, B, C, etc.) to choose an option (a program to run, or archiving process, or whatever). That menu batch file would end, delivering the user back to a command prompt. You would then have a series of other batch files called 1.BAT, 2.BAT, 3.BAT, etc. so that, when the user typed (for example) 2 and pressed Enter, it would run 2.BAT. (This is way easier to understand if you walk through making one! It’s really terribly simple.)

Today, when users don’t live in a DOS command prompt world, we want something slightly more sophisticated — and, fortunately, we have it. There is a pretty cool way to allow user input in Windows 2000 and XP, and even better ways that work in Windows Vista.

In Windows 2000 or XP, the SET command has new /A and /P flags that allow user input. The latter is especially helpful for our present purposes. You can accept user input and assign it to a system variable with the following code:

SET /P variable=PromptString

The PromptString is optional. If you include one, it will be ed on the screen. (Don?t forget a space at the end of the prompt if you want one!) For example,

SET /P M=Type 1 or 2, then press ENTER.

will on the monitor the phrase “Type 1 or 2, then press ENTER.” It will then wait for the user to type something and press Enter. It will then assign whatever character the user types to the system variable %M%, which you can use in other batch file commands.

يك مدتي هست خيلي ويرم گرفته ببينم چه طوري مي شه بچ فايل درست كرد ...

Windows Vista has added the CHOICE command. This is pretty cool! It lets you build simple menus just from this one command. On a Windows Vista computer, open a command prompt and type CHOICE /? to see all the things you can do with it. At the present, this might not be so useful if yo uare writing batch files that also will be run on Windows XP computers, because the CHOICE command will not work on those computers — and the SET /P approach above still works in Vista.

List of DOS commands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_DOS_commands

batch file

In DOS, OS/2, and Microsoft Windows, a batch file is a text file containing a series of commands intended to be executed by the command interpreter. When a batch file is run, the shell program (usually COMMAND.COM or cmd.exe) reads the file and executes its commands, normally line-by-line. Batch files are useful for running a sequence of executables automatically and are often used by system administrators to automate tedious processes.

DOS batch files have the filename extension .bat (or .BAT because file names are case insensitive in DOS, Windows and OS/2). Batch files for other environments may have different extensions, e.g. .cmd in Windows NT and OS/2, or .btm in 4DOS and related shells. The Windows 9x family only recognizes the .bat extension.

History

The command interpreters provide two distinct modes of work: interactive mode (in which the user types commands at a command prompt which are then executed immediately) and batch mode (which executes a predefined sequence of commands). The original concepts for both modes draw ideas from Unix shells, as well as other text-based command line interfaces from the early 1980s such as CP/M which in turn took much of their inspiration from TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 from Digital Equipment Corporation.

Microsoft DOS and Windows batch programming has evolved along with the product releases of these operating systems. Although a batch file is analogous to a shell in Unix-like operating systems, the limited syntax and commands available means it is less suited for general-purpose programming. These limitations led to various non-Microsoft interpreters to provide enhanced syntax by providing "enhancement" commands such as those in the Norton Utilities (like the BE or Batch Enhancer) and in 1989 the replacement shell 4DOS and later 4NT.

[edit] DOS

The batch program interpreter for MS-DOS and compatible DOSes is COMMAND.COM. Batch programs for MS-DOS are composed of a relatively simple set of commands interpreted directly by COMMAND.COM (internal commands), and utilities that exist as separate executables (external commands). The most commonly used batch file was AUTOEXEC.BAT. If present, it was automatically executed during the booting process.

The evolution of this branch of batch programming proceeded through the releases of MS-DOS, and continued with the early versions of Microsoft Windows through to Windows 95, Windows 98, and finally Windows Me, which remained based on MS-DOS.

[. . ." (pause).

Modern versions of Microsoft Windows such as Windows XP and Windows Vista are not based on MS-DOS, but on Windows NT. NT-based systems"s native command line interpreter is CMD.EXE which, while generally compatible with MS-DOS, provides many additional features and commands. (The older COMMAND.COM of MS-DOS is still available on NT-based systems where necessary for better backward compatibility.) It is a common myth that .bat are run by COMMAND.COM while .cmd are run by CMD.EXE. Nevertheless, there are differences between the .bat and .cmd extensions which affect when errorlevels are set.[1]

For complex tasks in Windows 98 and up the Windows Host may be used. It allows the running of s written in VB, J and related ing languages, but is more akin to traditional programming languages. It has no command line interface.

In 2006, Microsoft created another ing tool, Windows PowerShell, which can be used with Windows XP and above. It is also designed for interactive use from command line interface.

A modern way of securely distributing batch files is to compile them to executables. Some BAT to EXE compilers encrypt the s so they cannot be viewed with a normal text editor.

[edit] OS/2

Although the IBM OS/2 operating system supported DOS-style batch files, it also included a version of REXX — a more advanced ing language.

[edit] Example

An example of a simple batch file:

@echo off
cls
echo Hello World!
echo.
pause

This batch file would first turn off "echo". This only s the output of the command on the screen, not the input (EXAMPLE: Input: pause --- Output: Press Any Key To Continue.). Then, it would clear the screen after the echo off command (cls), then it would a line of text "Hello World!" (echo Hello World!), then an empty line below it (echo.), then it would keep the screen open until the user presses any key with the message "Press any key to continue.

linux

linux

linux

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

Contents

1. Writing your first and getting it to work
   1. Writing a
   2. Setting permissions
   3. Putting it in your path
2. Editing the s you already have
   1. Commands, commands, everywhere
   2. Aliases
   3. Shell functions
   4. type
   5. .bashrc
3. Here s
   1. Writing an HTML file with a
4. Substitutions - Part 1
   1. Variables
   2. How to create a variable
   3. Where does the variable"s name come from?
   4. How does this increase our laziness?
   5. Environment Variables
5. Substitutions - Part 2
   1. --help and other tricks
   2. Assigning a command"s result to a variable
   3. Constants
6. Quoting
   1. Single and double quotes
   2. Quoting a single character
   3. Other backslash tricks
7. Shell Functions
   1. Keep your s working

Contents

1. What is "the shell"?
   1. What"s an xterm, gnome-terminal, konsole, etc.?
   2. Starting a Terminal
   3. Testing the Keyboard
   4. Using the Mouse
2. Navigation
   1. File System Organization
   2. pwd
   3. cd
3. Looking Around
   1. ls
   2. less
   3. file
4. A Guided Tour
   1. /
   2. /boot
   3. /etc
   4. /bin, /usr/bin
   5. /sbin, /usr/sbin
   6. /usr
   7. /usr/local
   8. /var
   9. /lib
   10. /home
   11. /root
   12. /tmp
   13. /dev
   14. /proc
   15. /mnt
5. Manipulating Files
   1. Wildcards
   2. cp
   3. mv
   4. rm
   5. mkdir
6. I/O Redirection
   1. Standard Output
   2. Standard Input
   3. Pipes
   4. Filters
7. Permissions
   1. File permissions
   2. chmod
   3. Directory permissions
   4. Becoming the superuser for a short while
   5. Changing file ownership
   6. Changing group ownership
8. Job Control
   1. A practical example
   2. Putting a program in the background
   3. Listing your processes
   4. Killing a process
   5. A little more about kill

1. Some Real Work
2. show_uptime
3. drive_space
4. home_space
5. system_info
6. Flow Control - Part 1
7. if
8. What is a "condition"?
9. Exit status
10. test
11. exit
12. Testing for root
13. Stay Out of Trouble
14. Empty variables
15. Missing quotes
16. Isolating problems
17. Watching your run
18. Keyboard Input and Arithmetic
19. read
20. Arithmetic
21. Flow Control - Part 2
22. More branching
23. Loops
24. Building a menu
25. Positional Parameters
26. Detecting command line arguments
27. Command line options
28. Getting an option"s argument
29. Integrating the command line processor into the
30. Adding interactive mode
31. Flow Control - Part 3
32. Errors and Signals and Traps (Oh My!) - Part 1
33. Exit status
34. Checking the exit status
35. An error exit function
36. AND and OR lists
37. Improving the error exit function
38. Errors and Signals and Traps (Oh My!) - Part 2
39. Cleaning up after yourself
40. trap
41. Signal 9 From Outer Space
42. A clean_up function
43. Creating safe temporary files

Chapter 7: awk Revisited

Getting Starting with awk
Predefined variables of awk
Doing arithmetic with awk
User Defined variables in awk
Use of printf statement
Use of Format Specification Code
if condition in awk
Loops in awk
Real life examples in awk
awk miscellaneous
sed - Quick Introduction
Redirecting the output of sed command
How to write sed s?
More examples of sed

Chapter 8: Examples of Shell s

Logic Development:
Shell to print given numbers sum of all digit
Shell to print contains of file from given line number to next given number of lines
Shell to say Good morning/Afternoon/Evening as you log in to system
Shell to find whether entered year is Leap or not
Sort the given five number in ascending order (use of array)
Command line (args) handling:
Adding 2 nos. suppiled as command line args
Calculating average of given numbers on command line args
Finding out biggest number from given three nos suppiled as command line args
Shell to implement getopts statement.
Basic math Calculator (case statement)
Loops using while & for loop:
Print nos. as 5,4,3,2,1 using while loop
Printing the patterns using for loop.
Arithmetic in shell ing:
Performing real number calculation in shell
Converting decimal number to hexadecimal number
Calculating factorial of given number
File handling:
Shell to determine whether given file exist or not.
Screen handling/echo command with escape sequence code:
Shell to print "Hello World" message, in Bold, Blink effect, and in different colors like red, brown etc.
Background process implementation:
Digital clock using shell
User interface and Functions in shell :
Shell to implements menu based system.
System Administration:
Getting more information about your working environment through shell
Shell to gathered useful system information such as CPU, disks, Ram and your environment etc.
Shell to add DNS Entery to BIND Database with default Nameservers, Mail Servers (MX) and host
Integrating awk with shell :
to convert file names from UPPERCASE to lowercase file names or vice versa.