General information about the Windows shell.
Using variables in batch files.
Passing parameters to a batch file.
Transitions and labels.
Batch File Examples:
– Own command for creating new files.
– Assigning the same letter to a removable disk.
– Create an archive whose name contains the date and time.
– Execute only at the specified time interval.
– An example of creating a user directory archive.
– Change date and time for files and folders.
– Start and stop Windows services on the command line.
– Display the value ERRORLEVEL.
– Dialogue with the user.
– Delays in batch files.
– Detect current version of Windows.
– Search in the local network for computers running the application.
– Search for computers running the application in the list based on the network environment.
– Shutdown computers according to the list created on the basis of the network environment.
– Search for computers on the local network.
– Work with disks, files and directories.
– Working with graphical applications from the command line.
– Recoding text files.
– Common mistakes when writing batch files.
Transitions and labels.
In batch files, you can use conditional jump commands,
changing the logic of their work depending on the occurrence of certain conditions.
As an example, let’s create a command
file whose purpose is to assign a predefined letter to
removable media.
Initial data: there are 2 removable drives, one of which should be visible in the explorer as drive X:, and the second as drive Y: regardless of which USB port they are connected to and what letters are assigned to them by the operating system. To assign drive letters, you can use the command SUBST
.
We will assume that real disks can be connected as F: or G:
Disks will be identified by the presence of a file with a specific name
(it is best to make such a file hidden in the root directory of a removable disk and name it something unusual):
Flashd1.let – on the first disc
Flashd2.let – second
So the job of the batch file is to check
availability on removable disks F:
and G:
files Flashd1.let
or Flashd2.let
and, depending on which one is present,
assign drive letter X:
or Y:
To search for a file on the disk, use the command :
IF EXIST filename command
As a command that will be executed when the condition is met, use
, which is designed to map a directory to a virtual drive.
SUBST X: C:\ –
– create virtual disk
X:, the contents of which will be the root directory of drive C:
To solve the task, we create a batch file, for example with the name setletter.bat
, with the following content:
setletter.bat
The label is a character string starting with
with a colon. Let’s make changes in our batch file so that there is no
error messages:
When executing a batch file modified in this way, the message about
error when executing SUBST will disappear.
Of course, this example is very primitive, but its main purpose is not to write an optimal command script, but to demonstrate the principles of using labels and jumps. In all subsequent examples, as far as possible, this approach is used – it is not the optimality of the source text that matters, but its maximum simplicity for understanding.
One of the most important tricks when writing complex batch files
is the analysis of the success of a particular command or program.
Signs of errors when executing commands can be tracked by analyzing
special variable
,
the value of which is formed at the end of most programs.
Normally ERRORLEVEL is zero if the program exited without errors and
unit – when an error occurs. There may be other values, if they
provided in the running program.
As a command in a batch file line, you can also use
batch file. Moreover, for transmission with a return back to the point of execution
the calling batch file is used
command CALL
. Try to create a batch file test.bat
, with the following content:
– suspend the execution of the batch file until
pressing any key.
If CALL is removed in the test.bat file, leaving “1.bat”, then the batch file 1.bat will be executed, and return to test.bat will not be performed.
The called batch file can create variables and assign them
certain values that will be available for processing in the caller
file. Try changing the test.bat file like this:
The called file’s variables will be available in the calling file.
By the way, using the transfer of control to a batch file, you can organize
its looping. Try adding the following line to the end of the test.bat file:
You can exit the looping of the batch file by pressing the combination
CTRL+Break
.
The CALL instruction can be used not only to call another batch file, but also to call an internal subroutine. In this case, not the name of the external file, but the label is used as an argument:
Passing parameters to a batch file.
A very useful feature of working with batch files is
the ability to get command line parameter values and use them
in operations within the batch file itself.
params.bat FIRST second “two words”
Command line options containing spaces must be enclosed in double quotes.
When processing input parameters, you need to know if they were given on the command line at all. To check for the presence of any input parameters passed
batch file, you can check if the value of the variable %1
empty, which can be done by enclosing it, for example, in double quotes, and checking the result for the presence of these quotes in a row:
REM space text
Lines starting with REM space
, are treated as comments and ignored by the shell.
Using environment variables in batch files.
When working with batch files, it is impossible to do without environment variables
– Variables whose values determine the environment in which the command or batch file is executed. They are often referred to as environment variables. The values taken by these variables are formed when
booting Windows, user registration in the system, start or end
some applications, and, in addition, can be set using a special
teams
SET variable = value
SETX variable = value
The first assigns a value to a variable that is valid until the end of the current command line session. The second is a permanent value.
As mentioned above, the value assigned to a variable is available for processing on the command line or in a batch file using its name enclosed in percent signs – %
. System variables allow you to get information about the hardware and software environment in which the batch file is executed, which allows you to implement its execution on different computers, regardless of their specific configuration and user settings. For example, a batch file uses the output of the contents of the system directory C:\Windows
:
DIR C:\Windows
The algorithm implemented by this batch file will be perfectly executed until it encounters a computer with Windows installed not on the C: drive, but, for example, on D: To prevent this from happening, it is advisable to use the system variable WINDIR
, which takes the path value of the system directory:
In practice, the SET command usually sets and modifies the search path for executable programs.
– environment variable PATH
.
SET PATH=C:\Windows; C:\windows\system32
This command specifies that the search for executable files will be performed in
directory C:\Windows
and, if the result is unsuccessful, in
C:\windows\system32
If necessary, execute the program, for example, myedit.exe
located in
directory C:\NewProgs
you must either specify the full path of the executable file, or make the directory with the program the current directory and use only its name. If the full path is not specified on the command line, but only the name
executable file – myedit.exe
then the file will be searched first myedit.exe
in the current directory, and if
it will not be found – in directories whose list is determined by the value of the variable
PATH. Symbol ;
is the element separator in the list of search paths.
If in the above example, the current directory is not
C:\NewProgs
, and in other directories specified by the value of the variable
PATH, no executable myedit.exe
, then an attempt to run it
will end with an error. However, if you modify the value of the PATH variable to add the required directory to it, then specifying the full path of the executable file becomes optional.
Team
will change the current value of PATH,
adding the directory C:\NewProgs to the top of the list. To add a directory to the end of the list, a slightly different construction is used:
SET PATH=%path%; C:\NewProgs
Executing the SET command without parameters allows you to get the current
environment variable values:
NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS=1 – number of processors
OS=Windows_NT- OS type
Path=C:\WINDOWS\system32; C:\WINDOWS;C:\Program Files\Far – search path for executable files.
PATHEXT=. COM;EXE;BAT;CMD;VBS;VBE; . JS;JSE;WSF;WSH – extensions for executable files.
PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE=x86 – processor architecture.
PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER=x86 Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1, AuthenticAMD – processor ID.
PROCESSOR_LEVEL=6 – processor level (model number).
PROCESSOR_REVISION =0801 – processor version.
ProgramFiles=C:\Program Files – path to “Program Files” folder
PROMPT=$P$G – command line prompt format $P – path for current directory $G – sign “>”.
SystemDrive=C: – system drive letter.
SystemRoot= C:\WINDOWS – Windows OS directory.
The values of some variables are not displayed by the SET command, although they are present in the system. Basically, these are variables whose accepted values change dynamically:
%CD% – Takes the string value of the current directory.
%DATE% – Accepts the value of the current date.
%TIME% – Accepts the value of the current time.
%RANDOM% – Accepts a random decimal number in the range 1 -32767.
%ERRORLEVEL% – Accepts the current value of the task completion code ERRORLEVEL
%CMDEXTVERSION% – Takes the value of the CMD version. EXE for advanced command processing.
%CMDCMDLINE% – Takes the value of the line that called
command processor.
The values taken by environment variables can be expanded with
special sign – symbol “~”
, which makes it possible to obtain their partial
value, or change it by substituting some part. Practical examples of using variable expansions will be discussed below.
A detailed description of the commands with examples of their use is available in the section List of CMD Windows commands
.
CMD commands
Batch file lines may contain both commands of the
command processor CMD, and the names of executable modules (programs or batch files).
– executable file ping.exe
with parameter yandex.ru
. Extension .exe
can be omitted, and this command can be written like this:
A list of standard commands can be obtained by entering the command:
Help information on a specific command can be obtained by specifying its name as a parameter of the HELP command:
HELP Team name
In the Russian version of Windows, it must be taken into account that in the command processor environment, the characters of the national alphabet are displayed in DOS encoding, in accordance with the code page (code page) 866
. If necessary, the command
is used to switch between Windows and DOS code pages
CHCP page number
– use code page 866 (DOS)
– use codepage 1251 (WINDOWS)
Appearance of the CMD window. EXE (Windows console) can be changed with the command
The command takes 2 hexadecimal digits as arguments, specifying the background color and symbol color.
– white symbols on a black background (used by default).
– black characters on a white background.
– light yellow characters on a black background.
– hint for COLOR command.
Help
$ net use /?
Create an archive whose name contains the date and time.
Let’s solve the following problem – you need to create an archive of files located in the directory
C:\Program Files\FAR. The name of the archive file must consist of the current time
(hours.minutes.seconds – HH.MM.SS.rar) and placed in a new directory whose name must consist of the current date
(day.month.year – DD.MM.YYYY). For archiving, we will use the RAR archiver.
Launch format for creating an archive:
RAR a -r
a
– archive creation command.
-r
– the key that determines the archiving of subdirectories (because there are subdirectories in the source folder).
Thus, to solve the problem, you need to correctly create names and paths for RAR. For what
we use the following initial data:
and a numeric value that defines a group of characters from the data of the current value of the variable.
This example, like many others in this article, is not the most optimal design from the point of view of programming, and is presented in a form that is as accessible as possible for understanding. Having gained experience in writing batch files, you can remake it, turning it into literally a couple of lines.
The date obtained from the %DATE% variable in the default Windows 2000 regional settings
looks like this:
Mon 21.01.2005
– Day of the week (2 characters) – Space (1 character) – Date (10 characters) – 13 characters in total.
In Windows XP/Vista/7-10, there is no day of the week, which simplifies the processing of the date structure somewhat.
To create a new directory on the command line, use the command
MD directory name
.
In our example, the directory name must be obtained from the current date.
Create a temporary variable VDATE in memory and assign a value to it
environment variable DATE, without the first 3 characters (Mon and space) – 01/20/2016:
On versions of Windows where the value received by the DATE variable does not contain
day of the week (3 characters – “Mon”), the value of VDATE will not be the same as
required. In order not to analyze the signs of the presence of this code, you can
use another option – do not skip the first 3 characters (~3) from
the beginning of the DATE variable string, and take 10 characters from the end of the string, specifying the number 10 with a minus sign – the same result will be, for example, the string – 01/20/2016
set VDATE=%date:~-10%
Create a directory on the C: drive, whose name = the current date from the VDATE variable:
MD C:\%VDATE%
After executing this command, a directory named 01/20/2016 will be created on drive C:
You can do without unnecessary operators associated with the formation of the value of the VDATE variable, which I used to simplify the understanding of the structure of the generated directory name:
MD %DATE:~-10%
– create a directory whose name will be represented as the current date DD. MM. YYYY
The time obtained from the %TIME% variable looks like this:
14:30:59.93
– Hours, minutes, seconds, hundredths of a second.
Hundredths – this is perhaps superfluous in the name of the archive file. Therefore, we create a temporary
variable VTIME and assign it the current time without the last 3 characters, i.e.
skip 0 characters from the beginning and cut off 3 characters from the end. The number of skipped and clipped characters separated by a comma:
set VTIME=%time:~0,-3%
Now the VTIME variable is set to 14:30:59, but the colon character ( : ) cannot be used in the filename, it is a special character used in device names (drive C:\). Therefore, to get a valid file name, you need to replace the invalid character with any other, for example, a dot. To replace characters, use the sign ” = ”
set VTIME=%VTIME::=.%
– replace the colon character with a dot character in the VTIME variable.
The variable VTIME will take the value 14.30.59
rar.exe a -r C:\%VDATE%\%VTIME%.rar “C:\Program files\far\*.*”
Now you can create a batch file with content that archives the specified directory using the date and time in the archive name:
set VDATE=%date:~-10%
md c:\%VDATE%
set VTIME=%time:~0,-3%
set VTIME=%VTIME::=.%
rar.exe a -r C:\%VDATE%\%VTIME%.rar “C:\Program files\far\*.*”
Such a batch file can be executed via autoload, or as part of
script, when a user logs into the domain, or using the scheduler in
specified time, and you will always have stock sorted by time
archives of critical data.
Performing any action at a given time interval.
It’s not about running a batch file at a certain time, but
about the execution of some part of it only at a certain interval of time,
for example, from 10:00 to 12:00. Solving this problem will require a comparison
current time with the specified interval. For example, let’s create a command
a file that launches the standard Windows calculator, only if
if it is performed in the time interval from 10:00 to 12:00. Necessary
get the current time and check that it is no more than 12:00 and
not less than 10:00.
Team IF
allows you to compare strings
when using the format:
IF /I string1 comparison_operator string2 command
where comparison_operator
takes the following values:
EQU
– equals
NEQ
– not equal
LSS
– less
LEQ
– less than or equal
GTR
– more
GEQ
– greater than or equal
and key / I
, if present, specifies a comparison of text strings without regard to
register. This one is commonly used to compare text strings in
form line1==line2
. Comparisons are made over a common data type,
so if strings 1 and 2 contain only digits, then both strings are converted to
numbers, after which they are compared. Therefore, in order to solve our
tasks to compare
a string of the first two characters of the value of the TIME variable ( hh:mm:ss )
with a given range :
REM Time less than 12:00 – go to the analysis of the second condition, otherwise – exit
if %time:~0.2% lss 12 goto tst2
if %time:~0.2% gtr 10 goto excalc
In a similar way, you can organize a check by date, given the fact that for this method
comparisons need to use only numeric values from variables.
An example of creating an archive of the “My Documents” catalog.
This batch file archives the contents of a folder
“My Documents” of Win2K/XP/7-10 users, placing them in directories
C:\ARHIV\My Documents\Username\Date\Time
If you have problems with incorrect character encoding
Russian alphabet in the names of files and directories, try using the command
CHCP
to change code page
chcp 866
– set code page 866 (DOS encoding)
chcp 1251
– set code page 1251 (Windows encoding)
This batch file can be greatly reduced by removing unnecessary
variables VTIME and VDATE, which in this example are used only to
to make the script look more visual and easy to understand. In addition, it makes sense to use a more modern free archiver, for example – 7-Zip.
On Windows XP/Vista/7 operating systems, the default date format is not
contains the name of the day of the week. If there is a need to get this value
without changing the system settings and using additional software
software, you can use the Hindows Script Host (WSH) script.
– create a script file to get the name of the day of the week, albeit with the name
weekday.vbs, and containing a line to display the result of the execution
functions WeekDayName
An example of a batch file for getting the name of the day of the week with
using the function WeekDayName :
There are administrative tasks that are much easier to accomplish using WSH or Power Shell scripts rather than Windows CMD batch files.
Change the date and time of files or folders.
In Windows, unfortunately, there is no standard console tool for changing the date and time of creation, access and modification of files and folders. Anyone who has dealt with Unix / Linux knows that these operating systems have a simple and convenient utility
touch
with which you can change the last access time or file modification time to the current value or to the time value,
given as a command line argument. If the file does not exist, the utility creates an empty file with the specified name and sets the time of creation, last modification, and last access. Therefore, often touch
used to create empty files.
It’s no secret that the Unix/Linux command shells are far superior in their capabilities to the Windows command line, therefore, the appearance of the UNIX Shell and Utilities package is quite understandable.
for Windows NT and older. This package is a Windows version of the most popular Unix/Linux utilities that can be executed as console commands in the user shell environment (in the module environment sh.exe
, included in the package) or as executable files on the Windows command line. The set includes
more than 200 programs from the company Mortice Kern Systems (MKS)
,
recommended by Microsoft as a means of migrating from Unix to Windows.
Help on working with touch.exe
can be obtained by running the utility with the “–help” option accepted in Unix
In this case, the user is shown a brief hint
Examples of using the utility touch.exe
in Windows command line:
touch C:\folder\myfile.txt
– change the time of access and modification of the file C:\folder\myfile.txt to the current one. If the file does not exist, it will be created with a length of zero and the current creation, modification, and access times.
touch C:\folder
– change the access and modification time of the C:\folder to the current one.
touch -f C:\ntldr C:\folder
– change the access and modification time of the C:\folder folder to the time set for the file C:\ntldr
touch -t 199803080102.00 C:\folder
– set the value of the date and time of modification for the existing folder “C:\folder” – 1998, March 8, 1 hour : 2 minutes :00 seconds
touch -t 1112.30 C:\folder
– set for the existing folder “C:\folder” the value of date and time of modification – current date, 11 hours : 12 minutes :30 seconds
touch -a -t 2222.20 C:\folder
– change only the access time, the modification time does not change.
setdate.exe -c C:\1.txt 11/22/2016
– set the creation date for the C:\1.txt file to 11/22/2016
setdate.exe -m C:\1.txt 11/22/2016
– set the date of change (modification) for the file C:\1.txt to 11/22/2016
setdate.exe -a C:\1.txt 11/22/2016
– set the access date for the C:\1.txt file to 11/22/2016
setdate.exe -d C:\1.txt 11/22/2018
– set all dates to 11/22/2018 for file C:\1.txt
In versions of Windows 10 released after 2018, it is possible to use the standard Windows Subsystem for Linux (Windows Subsystem for Linux, WSL).
The user can install one of the Linux distributions in a Windows environment without any additional virtualization tools and use both operating systems at the same time.
With each new release of Windows 10, the WSL subsystem becomes more powerful and convenient. More –
Installation and examples of using the WSL subsystem in Windows 10
Stop and start system services.
To stop and start services from
command line, in any version of Windows, you can use the NET command. EXE
NET. EXE STOP
NET. EXE START
As a command parameter, you can use either a short or full service name
(“Dnscache” is short, “DNS client” is the full name of the service).
The service name containing spaces is enclosed in double quotes.
Example of restarting the “DNS client” service
net stop “DNS client”
net start “DNS client”
As can be seen from the table below, for example, IP address 192.168.0.1
corresponds to the physical address of the network adapter, equal to 00-1e-13-d6-80-00
. If the network adapter with the given address is unavailable, then there will be no such entry in the table.
To understand the network polling algorithm, consider the following:
ARP address resolution is used only when transmitting data over IP protocol within the local network segment specified by the mask. So, for example, for an example with an IP address of 192.168.0.1 and a mask of 255.255.255.0, this would be the IP range from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.254. Addressing any other address will be performed through the devices routing
. Those. when executing a command
Below is a simple example of a batch file that determines the list of enabled network devices on the local network based on the results of the PING and ARP commands.
Working with disks, files and directories.
The task is to determine the drive letters present in the system and write the result to a file with
named tstdsk.txt in the current directory. You can use the execution of the command IF EXIST
in the FOR loop for a set of letters of the Latin alphabet, i.e.
for each drive letter, check the presence of the root directory with the command
IF EXIST drive letter:\
First we create an empty file:
copy null tstdsk.txt
This action is optional if the file does not exist, but otherwise, the results will be appended to the end of the file, and if it already had a list of drives from a previous execution of the batch file, it will be doubled. Command copy nul tstdsk.txt
for an existing file, set the data size to zero, i.e. will make it empty.
Finally, the batch file will look like this:
To process files of a certain type, such as any with the extension .tmp
mask is used – *.tmp . So, to delete all *.tmp files from the C:\TEMP directory, you can use the ERASE (or DEL ) command
ERASE C:\TEMP\*. TMP
DEL /Q C:\TEMP\*. TMP
Partial names can be used in file and directory masks
ERASE C:\TEMP\A*. TMP – delete all files with extension . TMP , whose name begins with the character “A”
DIR *u*.* – list all files and subdirectories of the current directory that contain the character “u”
in their names
DIR C:\*t.* – list all files and directories in the root of drive C: whose name ends with “t”
The task is to get a list of all directories with subdirectories on a logical drive and write the result to a text file. For recursive processing of disk directories, we will use the command FOR /R
A simple example of deleting .tmp files from the C:\TEMP directory:
FOR /R C:\temp\ %%i IN (*.tmp) DO del %%i
When executing the command, it is possible to use the substitution values of the loop variable to get the names of drives, folders,
files and their characteristics. Full list of possible values in case of using a variable named i
%%~i – quotation marks (“”) are removed from the variable %i
%%~fi – %i expands to full file name
%%~di – only the drive name is extracted from the %i variable
%%~pi – only the path to the file is extracted from the %i variable
%%~ni – only the file name is extracted from the %i variable
%%~xi – the file name extension is extracted from the %i variable
%%~si – received path contains only short names
%%~ai – variable %i takes the value of file attributes
%%~ti – variable %i takes the file date/time value
%%~zi – variable %i takes the value of the file size
It is possible to combine several operators :
%%~dpi – %i variable is replaced with drive name and path only
%%~nxi – the %i variable is replaced only by the file name and its
expansion
%%~fsIi – the %i variable is replaced only by the full path with
short names
%%~ftzai – the %I variable is replaced with the string returned by
DIR team
Just like in the previous example, it is desirable to reset the file with the results of a possible previous run of this batch file:
As a result of executing this batch file, the file dirlist.txt will be created in the root of drive C:, containing a list of directories on the drive.
If the FOR /R command loop uses substitution values for the %%I variable, then you should not use the dot character as the set (in).
The task is to find files with the .log extension on the disk and copy them to a directory on another logical drive – D:\MUSOR
It is advisable to check the existence of the D:\MUSOR directory and, if necessary, create it with the command
md
, and also delete all files from it, if they exist, with the command del
. Then go to the root directory of drive C: and search for files by mask *.log in the FOR command loop
in all subdirectories.
REM prepare directory D:\MUSOR
if not exist D:\MUSOR md D:\MUSOR
REM delete without confirmation ( /Q) all files from the directory
del /Q D:\MUSOR\*.*
REM go to the root of drive C:
cd c:\
REM Check for *.log files and copy them to
REM D:\MUSOR
for /R %%i in (c) DO (
if exist “%%~dpi*.log” copy “%%~dpi*.log” “D:\MUSOR\*.*”
)
The practice of using FOR /R has shown that it is not worth using the “dot” character as a set for processing ( construction in (.)
) because when using substitution values, you can return from the current directory to the level above. In this example, any non-official character is used as the in set. The copy command ( copy ) can be replaced by the file move command (MOVE), which will remove the source files after copying to the D:\MUSOR directory.
The example of copying files with the .log extension discussed above has some
significant disadvantages – hidden files and folders are not processed, and in the final directory,
where the files are copied to ( D:\MUSOR ) subdirectories with the same names that belong to the paths of the original copied files are not created. To eliminate these shortcomings, you can use a slightly different script:
To copy, use the command xcopy
with keys:
/ H
– copy hidden files.
/R
– permission to replace files with “Read Only” attribute
/Q
– do not display names of copied files
/ Y
– allow overwriting existing files.
Command hint XCOPY
can be obtained by entering:
help xcopy
xcopy /?
While processing line xcopy “%%~dpi*.log” “D:\MUSOR%%~pi*.*” /H /R /Q /Y
in the FOR loop, C:\current path\*.log will be selected as the copy source
and as a destination – D:\MUSOR\current path\name of the copied file
A similar approach can be used to locate and copy executable files (*.exe) from the temporary directory specified by the TEMP variable. It can be useful for finding malware.
When working with the contents of directories, it is convenient to use the commands to remember the current directory and move to a new one PUSHD
and commands to restore the previously stored current directory POPD
Working with Windows graphics applications.
Let’s say you need to run notepad.exe from the same batch file
and cmd.exe. If you just insert lines
notepad.exe
cmd.exe
then after starting notepad.exe, the execution of the batch file will pause and until
notepad will terminate, cmd.exe will not run. The easiest way to get around this
problem – use the standard Windows command
. Full usage help can be obtained from:
start/?
Try creating a batch file with the following content:
start /MAX notepad.exe
start “This is CMD.EXE” /MIN cmd.exe
net send %COMPUTERNAME% NOTEPAD and CMD running.
After executing this batch file, you will see the started ones, in the maximized window
(key /MAX) notepad, in a minimized window (key /MIN) command processor CMD. EXE and
net.exe message box. Standard cmd.exe window title changed to text
“This is CMD.EXE”. Note that the window title can be omitted, but
peculiarity of processing input parameters by the start command can lead to
unexpected results when you try to run a program whose name or path contains
space(s). For example, when you try to run the following command:
start “C:\Program Files\FAR\FAR.EXE”
Due to the presence of a space in the path to the executable file,
string to run FAR. EXE must be enclosed in double
quotes, but the format of the input parameters for start
assumes a header
window, also enclosed in double quotes, resulting in “C:\Program Files\FAR\FAR.EXE”
is interpreted not as an executable program, but as a window title.
In order to prevent this from happening,
use any, even empty, title:
start “” “C:\Program Files\FAR\FAR.EXE”
If you still need advanced application window management,
you will have to use third-party software, for example, the well-known utility cmdow.exe
Version of cmdow.zip used in this article.
ZIP archive, password protected novirus
Due to its specific behavior, this utility is defined by most antiviruses as
as a virus, so for normal operation you need to add it to the antivirus exceptions. And for the same reason, the program archive is password protected novirus
Cmdow.exe is a tiny utility that works on all versions of Windows and doesn’t require installation.
Allows you to get a list of windows, move, resize, rename,
minimize/maximize, activate/deactivate, close, hide windows
applications and more. Help can be obtained by command:
cmdow /?
Approximately 30 keys are used. Description in Russian you will find
here.
Some examples:
cmdow.exe
or cmdow.exe > wins.txt
– display information about all windows on the screen or in the file wins.txt
cmdow /T
– give information about the windows displayed on the panel
desktop tasks.
Information contains columns:
Handle – window handle – a hexadecimal number associated with the given window.
Lev – window level. An application can be multi-windowed with multiple levels of windows.
Pid is the ID of the process that spawned the window.
-Window status- – window status (visible – Vis, hidden – Hid, active – Act,
collapsed – Min etc.
Image – the program that called the window.
Caption – window title
If you want your batch file to run invisibly,
add the line to it:
cmdow @ /HID
– hide the current window
Below is a commented batch file demonstrating how cmdow works:
It works as follows. From the CMDOW output is taken
first, second and 8th fields.
The first is the window handle (Handle), the second is the level (Lev), the third is the name
programs (Image). In a cycle
cmdow is executed and if its output contains a line where the name
IEXPLORE program and window level 1 is running cmdow /END
.
While this batch file is running, launch “Internet Explorer” is not
succeed. And if you add “cmdow @ /hid” to the beginning of the batch file, then it will be
its window is also hidden.
Recoding text files.
In this example, you need to convert the source text file in DOS encoding
into a new text file in Windows encoding.
Change is used as a conversion mechanism
code page command CHCP
and output the contents of the source file line by line with the command ECHO
With
redirecting the output to a new file. For DOS encoding, use
code page 866, for Windows encoding – 1251. In the example, the source file
is called 866.txt and the file with recoded data is 1251.txt
A kind of modern standard program for transcoding
files is considered a Unix ported utility iconv
(as part of the libiconv library).
When option -c is given
, characters that cannot be converted simply
are thrown away. Otherwise, when such an error occurs, the program
terminates abnormally.
When option -s is given
, no error messages are displayed.
Key -l
allows you to get a list of available encodings. The utility allows
transcode text, practically, from any encoding to any.
Common mistakes when writing batch files.
- The manual batch file runs successfully, but the one run with the scheduler does not work.
Usually, this is because you don’t take into account the fact that when your batch file is executed, the environment variables may be quite different than when it was written and run from the command line. For example, a batch file uses the launch of the myprog.exe application located in the SCRIPTS directory on the D: drive. If the batch file uses the name of the executable module without the full path
MYPROG. EXE
and if the directory D:\SCRIPTS is not registered in the search paths (PATH variable), then the MYPROG. EXE can only be found and executed if the current directory is D:\SCRIPTS. But if you specify the full path to myprog.exe:
D:\SCRIPTS\myprog.exe
then the program will be found and executed anyway.
In addition, often the program specified in the batch file uses its own directory to search for its components (dll, ini, etc.). But at the time of its execution, the current directory can be any (most often, the Windows system directory). Naturally, the components are not found and the program is not executed. To fix the problem, add commands to the batch file to navigate to the correct directory. For example, the program myprog.exe should run in the directory D:\SCRIPTS:
Rem Change the current disk
D:
Rem go to SCRIPTS directory
CD D:\SCRIPTS
myprog.exe
You can also use the commands pushd to navigate through directories
and popd
, which are described and used in the section List of CMD Windows commands
.
The reason is that when you create batch files, you
used a text editor in which Russian characters are represented
not in DOS encoding. If in the above example of restarting the “DNS Client” service
you are using the wrong encoding, the Russian part of the service name will not be recognized
due to incorrect encoding and a message will be displayed that the specified service is not
installed. To avoid problems with Russian characters in batch files,
use a DOS-encoded editor, such as the built-in editor
file manager Far Manager. Switching between encodings in the editor is done by pressing F8
. With FAR, you can easily transcode by copying (cutting) the text to the clipboard, then
pressing F8 and pasting the text from the clipboard.
Own command for creating new files.
There is no special command for creating a new file as part of the Windows operating system, but you can easily do without it in several ways:
Keyboard copy to file
COPY CON myfile.txt
When this command is executed, data from the keyboard (the standard CON device is the console) will be written to the file myfile.txt in the current directory. Pressing the F6 key or the CTRL-Z combination will complete the output.
Executing this command will create a file myfile.txt containing the character “1”
Combination of input redirection and output redirection:
COPY CON > myfile.txt < xyz
When executing this command, as in the first case, copying is used
from the console to a file, but instead of manually entering data from the keyboard, input is used with
non-existent file (device) xyz. The system will display a message stating that such
device or file
does not exist, but an empty file myfile.txt will be created successfully.
Usually, copy command from dummy device nul is used to create an empty file
to file. Using the nul device allows you to bypass standard I/O operations that are not actually performed on it. Copying from a dummy device to a file will create an empty file without any error messages.
COPY NUL myfile.txt
When working on the command line, you often need to create new empty
files, therefore, it is worth preparing your batch file (for example, with
named nf.bat),
and pass the name of the newly created file to it as a parameter when
startup.
For ease of use, you can place this batch file in the system directory
(for example, in C:\windows\system32) or any other that exists in the paths
searches specified by the value of the PATH variable). Now, in the command line, being in any directory, you can create empty files with one command.
The ability to create files in system directories depends on the system security settings and the rights of the user under whose account context the command is executed. Many commands can only be executed by a user with administrator rights.
The batch file extension (.bat) can be omitted and the command is further simplified:
In the text of the batch file, there is a check whether the name is set
created file on the command line (if “%1%” EQU “” goto error), and if not
given – an error message is displayed and the batch file exits
my job.
In terms of improving the functionality, you can add a check to this batch file
on the existence of a file with the name specified on the command line and a warning to the user about its possible overwriting.
Create Share
$ net share "myshare=c:\cygwin64"
Examples of batch files.
The use of command line utilities and batch files often allows
solve many problems associated with the daily operation of a computer
technology. Most system administrators and knowledgeable users
continue to use them, despite the fact that something new appeared in Windows,
more powerful and modern system management tool – WMI
(Windows Management Instrumentation) and multifunctional user shell Power Shell
. Obviously, last but not least, this
due to the ease of implementation and sufficient
command line efficiency for day-to-day system maintenance tasks.
Below are simple
examples with comments that demonstrate some of the features and
ways to use .cmd and .bat
Delete or Remove Share From Remote Computer
$ net share myshare \\192.168.122.66 /delete
Set Permission For Share Access
/GRANT:username,right
$ net share myshare myshare /GRANT:john,FULL
Assigning the same drive letter to the removable disk.
The task is to make the removable USB disk (flash disk) available
always under the same letter, no matter what computer it is on
used and how it was connected. To solve it, we use the command already mentioned above SUBST
, but we implement the assignment of a new drive letter with
using a substitution variable %0
created
system every time the batch file is run.
Select the desired letter for the removable disk, for example – X.
Some of the environment variables, including the variable %0
,
taking the value of the path and name of the executing batch file, allow
with a certain modification using a special feature –
character ” ~ ”
, get its partial value (variable expansion). For example, not the full path
file, but only its name, or location directory, or drive letter, with
which it was launched or about a dozen different elements related to
with substitution variable values %0
.
Additional insight into wildcard values
variable %0 can be obtained from the batch file as follows
content:
List Shares
$ net share
-
Share name
is the name used to mount this share in the client side -
Resource
is the path the share will be mapped -
Remark
is comments and notes about this share which is set while share creation.
Unmount Share
$ net use z: \\192.168.122.167\myshare /delete
Delete or Remove Share With Physical Location
$ net share c:\cygwin64 /delete
Syntax
net use [option]
CMD Special Characters
Working with a command processor involves the use of two standard devices – an input device (keyboard) and an output device (display). However, it is possible to change the default I/O devices using special characters – redirect characters
– output redirection
– input redirection
To display help not on the screen, but, for example, in a file called help.txt, you can use the following command:
HELP > help.txt
When this command is executed, a file with the name help.txt will be created in the current directory
, whose contents will be the output of the HELP command. If file help.txt
existed at the time the command was executed, its contents will be overwritten. In order to append data to the end of an existing file, doubling the output redirection character is used – “>>”
HELP GOTO > myhelp.txt
– to file myhelp.txt
help will be displayed on the use of the GOTO command
HELP COLOR >> myhelp.txt
– help on using the COLOR command will be added to the end of the myhelp.txt file
The simplest example of input redirection:
cmd.exe < commands.txt
– the command processor will not wait for commands from the keyboard, but reads them from the file commands.txt
. In fact, the specified text file in this case is a batch file.
When running the shell, you can specify a specific command as a command line argument:
cmd.exe /C HELP FOR
– execute command HELP FOR
and terminate (command line parameter or switch /C
)
cmd.exe /K HELP FOR
– execute command HELP FOR
and switch to the waiting mode for further input of commands (key / K
)
Detailed help on using cmd.exe can be obtained by entering the key /?
&
– a single ampersand is used to separate multiple commands on the same command line.
team1 & team2
– the first command is executed, then the second command.
&&
– a double ampersand between two commands, meaning the conditional execution of the second command. It will be executed if the exit code (or return code) of the first command is zero, i.e. command completed successfully. success
command execution is determined by the value of the special environment variable ERRORLEVEL.
team1 && team2
– running command1
, a
team2
executed only if the first one was successful.
The command following the concatenation characters does not need to be enclosed in
double quotes, otherwise the shell will double them and report an error.
Command Line Execution
cmd.exe /C “HELP IF” & ”HELP IF”
Will end with the execution of the first command and an error message for the second:
“HELP” is not internal or external
command, executable program, or batch file.
Like any other programming language, CMD scripts cannot do without variables. To obtain their value, a special symbol is used – the percent sign %
. A string enclosed in percent signs is interpreted as the value of a variable, for example:
Symbol ^
, which is the last character of the line, is used as a sign of continuation of the previous one. This applies to both text and commands.
Delete or Remove Share With Share Name
$ net share myshare /delete
Mount Share
$ net use z: \\192.168.122.167\myshare
List Mounted Shares
$ net use
-
Status
shows current situation like connected or not connected -
Local
shown the local mount point -
Remote
shows remote file share full path including the host name/IP address and the path -
Network
shows network used to access share.
