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hpr_transcripts/hpr3700.txt

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+Episode: 3700
+Title: HPR3700: Introduction to Batch Files
+Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3700/hpr3700.mp3
+Transcribed: 2025-10-25 04:17:20
+
+---
+
+This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3,700 for Friday the 7th of October 2022.
+Today's show is entitled Introduction to Batch Files.
+It is part of the series DOS.
+It is hosted by AOKA, and is about 15 minutes long.
+It carries a clean flag.
+This summary is More on DOS.
+This time is Introduction to Batch Files.
+Hello, this is AOKA, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio.
+And another exciting episode in our ongoing DOS series.
+And what I want to do today is begin taking a look at Batch Files.
+It's an important concept.
+Now a Batch file is a file that contains a number of DOS commands, each of which you could
+run individually from the command prompt.
+By putting them into a Batch file, they can be run as a group by simply running the Batch
+file.
+Note that the commands execute in the order they appear in the Batch file, and that anything
+that causes a command to halt will also halt the Batch file.
+You create a Batch file by using an ASCII text editor, such as the DOS edit, which we had
+looked at previously in preparation for all of this stuff, or you could do it in, if you
+were in Windows with notepad.
+When you have created the Batch file, you save it with a file name, and give it the extension
+.bat.
+Now, note that you must not use a name that is the same as any DOS commands, or any other
+program or utility you are likely to run.
+If you use a DOS command name, trying to run your Batch file will not work, because the
+DOS command will execute first.
+If your name matches some other program or utility, you may never be able to run that
+program again, because your Batch file will run before the program runs.
+So pick something that is not likely to match any command name or program file name.
+Virtually all internal and external commands can be used in a Batch file.
+The few exceptions are the commands that are intended only for configuration, which are
+used in the configsys file.
+Examples of these include buffers, country, device, and so on.
+Now when you create a Batch file, you are beginning to write a program, basically, DOS, Batch
+files, may not have the power of a structured programming language, but they can be very
+handy for quick tasks.
+Because this is a form of programming, let us begin with learning some good habits.
+The number one good habit for any programmer to learn is to put comments in the program
+that explain what the program is doing.
+This is a very good thing to do, but you need to be careful not to fool the operating
+system into trying to execute your comments.
+The way to avoid this is to place REM, short from remark, at the beginning of a comment
+line.
+The OS will then ignore that line entirely when it executes the program, but anyone who
+looks at the source code in the Batch file can read your comments and understand what
+it is doing.
+This is also a way to temporarily disable a command without deleting it.
+Just open your Batch file for editing, place the REM at the beginning of the line you
+want to disable.
+When you want to reenable that command, just open the file for editing and remove the REM,
+and the command will resume functioning.
+This technique is sometimes referred to as remarking out or commenting out a command.
+Now from this description, you may think this sounds familiar.
+In the Unix or Linux world, this is simpler to things like a bash script, which is very
+much the same kind of thing, a series of commands that you can execute, and they will execute
+in order.
+Now our DOS Batch files is good as bash scripts.
+Well they don't have all of the power that a bash script has, and of course, bash is only
+one of a number of shells that you could be operating.
+It's the one that I use.
+It's the most common one.
+So I'm not really qualified to comment on Z-shell or C-shell or what have you because I don't
+use any of those.
+I'm bash is the one I'm used to.
+But there's nothing new under the sun in other words.
+Now Batch files can save time.
+Many years ago I was at a technology conference for college professors.
+I was a college professor at the time, and faculty development officer at the college
+I was at.
+At the end of the conference we needed to quickly make about 40 floppy disks, each with an
+identical set of about 15 vials.
+There are various ways of doing this, such as using disk copy or copy commands, but I
+wanted to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible.
+So I sat down with the computer, which was running DOS, and quickly copied the 15 files
+into a temporary directory on the hard drive.
+I could have then opened edit, but to be even faster I entered it directly from the console.
+And that's one of the things you can do is you can type right at the console, and the
+command I used was C colon, backslash, right at the prompt, the C colon prompt, backslash
+copy, con, copy, space, con, space, one, dot, BAT, space, copy, space, C colon, backslash,
+temp, backslash, star, dot, star, space, a colon, space, control, Z.
+So what's this all about, copy, space, con, that is saying I'm about to type something
+into this computer, and I want you to copy whatever I type into a file, then one dot
+BAT, that's the name of the file, right, then another copy.
+Now this is a command that's going to be in the file, and what is the command copy, space,
+C colon, backslash, temp, backslash, star, dot, star, that's saying copy everything in the
+temp directory, where do we copy it, space, a colon, copy it to the a drive, control,
+Z, I'm done, end copying into this file, and then back comes a response from the computer,
+it says one file, parentheses, S, close parentheses, copied, all right, so we copy from the
+console, we store it in a file called one dot BAT, the console in this case just means
+the keyboard, it's just taking whatever I type and entering into a file, and the second
+line is the single command in my batch file, it copies all of the files in the directory,
+C colon, backslash, temp, to the floppy disk in the a drive, third line is holding the control
+key while typing control Z, this is the end of file marker, and tells the OS I am through
+entering text into this file, the fourth line is the response from the operating system
+saying okay boss, we copied your file, now I could then view this file in several ways,
+I could use the type command, the type command will cause DOS to open a file and display
+the contents on the screen, it's typing it out for you, I could open it in edit, and if
+I did I would see the single line, copy, space, C colon, backslash, temp, backslash, star dot
+star, space, a colon, now if I opened it in edit I could then add more commands or whatever
+I wanted to do with it, but in this case I didn't want to do anything else, now once I
+created this file all I had to do was feed in a floppy, press the one key, then the enter
+key, and the batch file would copy everything, as soon as one disk had received its contents,
+pop it out, put in a fresh disk, hit the one key, then enter, etc. I had the 40 floppy
+disks done in not much more than 10 minutes, in this case I used the batch file to automate
+a repetitive process and save me some keystrokes, now another great use for batch files to clear
+out your temporary directories, this trick works great in windows which uses batch files
+just like DOS, create a batch file like this, DEL space, C colon, backslash, temp, backslash,
+C colon, backslash, temp, backslash, star dot star, space, DEL space, C colon, backslash,
+windows, backslash, temp, backslash, star dot star, with these two commands you can clean
+out two directories that might otherwise gradually accumulate a lot of temporary files.
+Create the batch file, stick a shortcut to it in your start up folder, and those directories
+will be cleaned out automatically every time you boot windows. Now if you want to be a
+little more conservative and you worry that you might delete something important, what
+you could do is alter your commands like this, so the first command would be DEL space, C colon,
+backslash, temp, backslash, star dot TMP, and then for the other one DEL space, C colon, backslash,
+windows, backslash, temp, backslash, star dot TMP. Now you will only delete files with the TMP
+extension, and by definition those files are safe to delete. Now batch files from multiple
+commands, and to really tap the power of batch files, you need to use multiple commands.
+Now on my website, and there's a link in the show notes to the page, I take an actual example
+from the windows 95 installation CT ROM, and start picking it apart. It's complicated,
+and if I try and just recite all of this stuff, it's going to be very boring audio.
+So let me just give you a little overview. It starts off with a command to turn off echo,
+so it's not going to throw everything up on the screen. Then there's comments to say this is what the
+section of the file is doing, it's looking for the name of your windows directory. For most people it would have been
+C Windows, C colon, backslash, windows, but mine at the time was C colon, backslash,
+win 95, because I used to use dual boot machines a lot. In fact I was kind of famous for having
+one machine that had I think six different operating systems I could boot into at the boot time.
+Then it's looking for the name of the directory, if it does not find a name, it'll jump down to a section called no
+window, no window directory. If it does find a name, it'll keep going with the commands in order.
+Then there's some more comments about the next section, what it expects to find. If it doesn't find it,
+it'll jump down to the no file section. If it does find it, it'll keep going through the commands in order.
+Then there are some commands to rename the file and so on. Finally there's a thing at the end that says,
+we're done, this ends the batch file and it stops running. This is an example of a moderately complex
+batch file that uses excellent technique in this documentation. All of the remarks I think are a wonderful
+thing. You happen to have a Windows 95 installation CD or what have you lying around, you know,
+check it out for yourself. Each section has an REM section of the batch file has an REM section that
+explains what's going on. Also note how the writer used extra blank REM lines above and below each
+remark to set it off from the rest of the batch file. These are not needed in any sense, but they make
+it more readable for a person who's trying to follow what the batch file does. So you know, you put in
+to do that, you would do REM hit the enter key, REM again and now write your remark hit the enter key
+and then write REM again hit the enter key. So you've got blank lines above and below. It's a great
+technique. I really love it. I say you can see it on my website or take a look at it if you have the
+media around yourself, but it is wonderful and I'd encourage everyone to take a look at it. So this is a
+hookah for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you to support free software. Bye-bye!
+You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio does work. Today's show was
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