• Overview
• Part 1 – Getting Started
• Part 2 – Variables
• Part 3 – Return Codes
• Part 4 – stdin, stdout, stderr
• Part 5 – If/Then Conditionals
• Part 6 – Loops
• Part 7 – Functions
• Part 8 – Parsing Input
• Part 9 – Logging
• Part 10 – Advanced Tricks

Boilplate info

I like to include a header on all of scripts that documents the who/what/when/why/how. You can use the :: comment trick to make this header info more readable:

:: Name: MyScript.cmd
:: Purpose: Configures the FooBar engine to run from a source control tree path
:: Author: stevejansen_github@icloud.com
:: Revision: March 2013 - initial version
:: April 2013 - added support for FooBar v2 switches
@ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
:: variables
SET me=%~n0
:END
ENDLOCAL
ECHO ON
@EXIT /B 0

Conditional commands based on success/failure

The conditional operators || and && provide a convenient shorthand method to run a 2nd command based on the succes or failure of a 1st command.

The && syntax is the AND opeartor to invoke a 2nd command when the first command returns a zero (success) exit code.

DIR myfile.txt >NUL 2>&1 && TYPE myfile.txt

The || syntax is an OR operator to invoke a 2nd command when the first command returns a non-zero (failure) exit code.

DIR myfile.txt >NUL 2>&1 || CALL :WARNING file not found - myfile.txt

We can even combined the techniques. Notice how we use the () grouping construct with && to run 2 commands together should the 1st fail.

DIR myfile.txt >NUL 2>&1 || (ECHO %me%: WARNING - file not found - myfile.txt >2 && EXIT /B 1)

Getting the full path to the parent directory of the script

:: variables
PUSHD "%~dp0" >NUL && SET root=%CD% && POPD >NUL

Making a script sleep for N seconds

You can use PING.EXE to fake a real *nix style sleep command.

:: sleep for 2 seconds
PING.EXE -N 2 127.0.0.1 > NUL

Supporting “double-click” execution (aka invoking from Windows Explorer)

Test if %CMDCMDLINE% is equal to %COMSPEC% If they are equal, we can assume that we are running in an interactive session. If not equal, we can inject a PAUSE into the end of the script to show the output. You may also want to change to a valid working directory.

@ECHO OFF
SET interactive=0
ECHO %CMDCMDLINE% | FINDSTR /L %COMSPEC% >NUL 2>&1
IF %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 SET interactive=1
ECHO do work
IF "%interactive%"=="0" PAUSE
EXIT /B 0

<< Part 9 – Logging