batch language tutorials - running simple programs that rely on .bat file - batch-file

I am just starting to get a handle on batch programming.
To date, I've been copy/pasting into the MS-DOS command prompt from a text editor. Some of these copy pastes are getting large. Im sure there is a better way to go about this, ie. writing a line in command prompt that calls other text files (effectively doing the work of copy pasting).
Are these external files going to be .bat (which are just text that could also be put directly into the command prompt?) or .txt or something else?
I am mainly looking into this so that I can get into reusing code and getting into looping.
Are there any tutorials someone would recommend to get my acquainted with these topics?
Thanks for any help.

You can name a text file .bat or .cmd (the latter if you know it's only usable as a Windows batch file) and put commands into it, line by line.
You can run such files by typing their name at the command prompt when you're in the directory where they reside (or if they are contained in one of the PATH directories).
By default the behavior will match pretty much exactly with what you would type by hand. You'll see what commands are executed as well as their output. For example the following batch file (saved as test.cmd here)
echo Hello World
dir /b *.cmd
yields the following output when run
> echo Hello World
Hello World
> dir /b *.cmd
date.cmd
foo.cmd
test.cmd
x.cmd
y.cmd
You can suppress the output of the command being run by including the line
echo off
in your batch file. Prefix it with an # to suppress command output for that line in particular, but ever subsequent command won't be echoed:
#echo off
If other concrete questions arise, feel free to ask.

Related

Why does my IrfanView command not work on batch file but work when typing directly in CMD?

I'm a first-day user of IrfanView and have a question. I have a bunch of multi-page tiff files and I want to split all of them individually. So I write a batch file with the command like this:
C:\Program Files\IrfanView>i_view64.exe D:\originaldirectory\filename1.tif /extract=(D:\newdirectory,tif)
C:\Program Files\IrfanView>i_view64.exe D:\originaldirectory\filename2.tif /extract=(D:\newdirectory,tif)
...and so on...
I put the batch file on D drive, let's say in folder "batchfolder". But it can't do the job, this message shows up for each unsuccessful case (all of them were unsuccessful):
D:\batchfolder>C:\Program Files\IrfanView D:\originaldirectory\filename1.tif /extract=(D:\newdirectory,tif) 1>i_view64.exe
'C:\Program' is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
I guess that has something to do with the batch file location, so I bring it to C drive. But still it can't run properly, this time a different message shows up:
C:\>C:\Program Files\IrfanView D:\originaldirectory\filename1.tif /extract=(D:\newdirectory,tif) 1>i_view64.exe
Access is denied.
This C:\>C:\ makes me think maybe the C:\ part on the batch file was redundant. So I take it out to make it look like this:
Program Files\IrfanView>i_view64.exe D:\originaldirectory\filename1.tif /extract=(D:\newdirectory,tif)
...
But it doesn't work, either with the batch file on D or C drive.
I then try to type it directly in the CMD window and it works normally, like this:
C:\Program Files\IrfanView>i_view64.exe D:\originaldirectory\filename1.tif /extract=(D:\newdirectory,tif)
Can you tell where my batch file goes wrong?
This is another question. Typing (or copy and paste) the batch file contents into the CMD works OK. But upon successful splitting, the original, multi-image file automatically opens. How can I deactivate this feature?
Note: Cross-post here: https://irfanview-forum.de/showthread.php?t=11150&p=47111#post47111. Hope it doesn't violate policy.
enclose paths/filenames with spaces into quotes to tell the interpreter, it's not two words, but one string (or even better: get used to always enclose path/filenames):
"C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view64.exe" "D:\originaldirectory\filename1.tif" /extract=("D:\newdirectory",tif)`
Before you build a batchfile with dozends or hundreds of nearly identical lines, use a for loop to process all .tif files in the folder:
#echo off
for %%a in ("D:\originaldirectory\*.tif") do (
"C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view64.exe" "%%~fa" /extract=("D:\newdirectory",tif)
)
see for /? for more information.
You need to call the executable with quotes in the batch. Also, the > in the path will not work either. Also consider using a for loop instead of creating single batch lines.
Please try this:
"C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view64.exe" "D:\originaldirectory\filename1.tif" /extract=("D:\newdirectory",tif)

How to make batch file to run exe file which requires some text

I need to run 'a.exe'.
When I start 'a.exe' file, a console pops up, and I should type "go", then the program start.
If i want to make a batch file to run this program, how should i make this.
I tried as below:
///////////
%~d0
cd %~dp0
start a.exe > "go"
pause
///////////
but "go" appears on the batch console, and the "a.exe" program still requires "go" text.
How can i solve this?
Assuming you are coding a windows .bat script, you can execute any file by just passing the file with its path and its argument on the same line a.exe go, so your script would be something like this:
#echo off
c:\path\to\file\a.exe go
PAUSE
I am turning off CMD echo so the output of a.exe is easier to be read.
There is another question here were this is further explained: Create a batch file to run an .exe with an additional parameter.
On the other hand, if you need to call another script, you would need to use the method call
#echo off
call c:\path\to\other\script\script.bat
c:\path\to\file\a.exe go
PAUSE
You can use:
start echo go| a.exe
Just type in
a.exe go
Hope it helped you out.
You can also use it to run files through certain programs
photoshop img.png

How to pass commands in a text file to an EXE running through the command line with batch?

I have a text file with lots of commands in it and I want to sent those commands to a software called thermocal. It is a console application. I found the command below, but it doesn't work for me.
Do I need to put this .exe file in the same folder of the batch file to make it work or any thing else?
type somefile.txt | Thermocal.exe
Batch scripts can be considered as a collection of lines you could also type in a command line prompt one after another. With respect to this it might be helpful for you, to play with cmd in order to get a feeling for what is happening.
About starting thermocal: Assuming thermocal is not part of PATH then the batch file either needs to change the current directory to the one with termocal.exe. Alternatively you might be able to call thermocal.exe with adding a path like C:\ProgramFiles\Thermocal\thermocal.exe . Play with cmd to find out, what works and what doesn't
When you are able to start thermocal from the command line prompt window, you can start experimenting with the call. You will probably end of with something like this in your command line window:
C:\ProgramFiles\Thermocal> thermocal argument1 argument 2
If this works, you can start with batch programming :)
Assuming your arguments are stored in somefile.txt like this:
argument1 argument 2
TYPE does nothing more than printing a file:
TYPE somefile.txt
Now you need to use the result of the output as command line arguments:
for /f %%i in ('type somefile.txt') do (thermocal.exe %%i)

Send text to standard input of a Windows console app

I am trying to write a .bat file to automate some shell commands. Most of the commands are easy and I can just put them into the batch file directly, but there is one command which instead of taking command line parameters, expects you to type in the options you want using "the standard input". I'm not exactly sure what that means. Can someone tell me how to do this? The text I would like to be entered is the contents of one of the files in the directory: "options.txt" which I want to concatenate with a variable inside the batch file "$(additionaloptions)".
Make sense?
The usual way to do this in .bat files is to use echo to write a small text file, then redirect the text file to standard in of the command.
#echo foo > bar.txt
#echo if you need multiple lines >> bar.txt
the_cmd < bar.txt
In your specific example it would something like
copy myfile.txt bar.txt
#echo %variable% >> bar.txt
The fact that you are mention $(variable) suggests to me that this is a makefile rather than a batch file. for a makefile, theres a better way.

Stupid Batch File Behavior. Tries to execute comments

I have tried prefixing lines with semicolons, 'REM', etc.. but no matter what when I run my batch file I keep getting "unknown command REM whatever"
"REM test" It is not recognized, and it is windows vista. I simply get "rem" output back to my console.
That's entirely normal behavior. Batch files are simply sequences of commands that are run one after another. So every line will get output to the console as if it were typed there.
H:\>echo rem test > test.cmd
H:\>test
yields the output
H:\>rem test
as if I typed rem test directly to the console.
You can suppress this by either prefixing the line with #:
#rem test
or by including echo off in the batch file:
#echo off
rem test
If I put ":: test" and execute it I get back "Test".
Can't reproduce here.
If I put "; test" it recursively executes itself
A semicolon at the start of the line seemingly gets ignored.
If you're talking about cmd.exe batch files under Windows, you can use:
rem this method or
:: this method.
For bash and a lot of other UNIX-type shells, you use:
# this method.
I'm pretty certain you're not using cmd.exe since that would give you an error like:
'rem' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
rather then:
Unknown command ...
If you are using a UNIX-type shell, the # character is almost certainly what you're after. If you let us know exactly the shell you're using, we can probably help out further.
you probably created an UNICODE file. These files contain 2 bytes header named BOM
which is not shown by any editor but cmd attempts to execute them and fails.
To make sure this is indeed an issue: type any other command at the very beginning
of your file and see it throws the same error - for example #echo test
To fix it, just create a new plain text file and copy content of the original file there.
then remove the original file and replace it by the newly created one.
In my case the problems are line endings. Somehow Maven or the Jenkins pipeline running on a Linux machine changed the line endings from Windows style (CR LF) to Unix style (LF). Changing them back solves the issue for me.

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