Chapter 21

Creating and Testing Batch Files

In this chapter, you will learn to:

• Use Batch File Commands
  • Employ the Call Command
  • Employ the Choice Command
  • Employ the Echo Command
  • Employ the Exit Command
  • Employ the ForFiles Utility
  • Employ the For Command
  • Employ the GoTo Command
  • Employ the If Command
  • Employ the Pause Command
  • Employ the Prompt Command
  • Employ the Rem Command
  • Employ the TimeOut Utility
• Test Batch Files
  • Add Debug Information to Batch Files
  • Identify Batch Files and Their Actions
  • Use a Centralized Data Store
• Store and Retrieve Directories with the PushD and PopD Commands

Batch files have been around since the days of DOS. They’re reliable, easy to write, exceptionally easy to understand for the most part, and there’s a large base of batch file code you can download from the Internet. For these reasons, and many more, you really need to know how to write batch files—at least, simple batch files. Automating tasks using batch files makes you far more efficient and frees time that you need to perform tasks that you really must perform manually. This chapter can’t provide you with every piece of information about writing batch files. In fact, you can easily find a dozen books whose whole purpose is to tell you how to write batch files. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce you to the batch file commands a....