I spent a part of yesterday looking through all the commands in Cmd.Exe (the Windows command shell, inheritor of the old COMMAND.COM). It’s interesting how they’ve added switches and stuff to improve on it since the early days, but how almost nobody seems to use it. Admittingly, it’s a far cry from bash, the Unix command shell, but there’s a few old tricks you still can pull out of the hat. People may flame it and despise it, but I always thought you should be able to do more with the good ol’ shell.
Here’s a few of the things I found … in alphabetical order.
ATTRIB [/s] [/d]
Changes file attributes. /s makes it recursive, /d makes it operate on directories as well. I didn’t know about these switches before. Handy.
CALL :label arguments
Neither did I know you could call a label in a batch file. This should make it easier to write “gosub”-like routines. And the parameters can be expanded with new interesting features, see below. To exit from the subroutine, use the “goto :eof” statement.
CHKNTFS
Schedule a check-disk on next boot. Might come in handy sometime.
EXIT /b [errorlevel]
Exits the command shell. If you use the /b switch, exits the current batch file. You can also pass an errorlevel along.
F7
Pressing F7 brings up the history list. How come I never knew that?
FINDSTR [/r] [/c:]“search string” filespec
Find strings in files. I might still use Turbo Grep, but this is cool too. Normally it searches using an OR pattern on the search string (meaning “I love you” finds all instances of “I”, “love” or “you”), use the /c: switch to make it an AND search.
The /r parameter turns the search string into a regexp. Note, some of the fancier stuff might not work as usual, consult the FINDSTR /? or the online help for further information.
FOR %%v IN (set) DO …
The FOR command is one of the coolest features in batch programming. I had no idea you could do so much with it.
FOR %%f IN (dpr pas dfm res) DO COPY *.%%f \deploy
Copy all Delphi source files for a project to a specific directory.
FOR /d %%d IN (set) DO …
Match directories in wildcards instead of files.
FOR /r [path] %%v IN (set) DO …
Recursive operation on files found, optionally operating relative to “path” instead of the current directory. It might be used like “FOR /r c:\deploy %%f IN (*.*) DO ATTRIB -r %%f”, which will recursively remove the read-only attribute from all files in c:\deploy.
FOR /l %%v IN (start, step, end) DO …
For-loop. “FOR /l %%v IN (1, 1, 5)” gives the sequence 1 2 3 4 5.
FOR /f ["options"] %%v IN (file-set | “string” | ‘command’) DO …
The /f parameter is probably the most interesting feature I’ve found. It reads lines from an input file, string, or result from a shell command, tokenizes them and processes a command for each line. Normally, the token delimiters are space and tab, and it usually operates on the first token found, so without extra options you will always get the first word in each line. But it can be modified with the following options:
| eol=c |
Set the end-of-line character. One character only. |
| skip=n |
Skip n lines in the beginning. |
| delims=xxx |
Delimiter set, default is space and tab. |
| tokens=x,y,n-m |
Which tokens to feed into the command. Variables start at the variable given, and allocates further as needed in alphabetical order. * means “the rest of the line”. |
| usebackq |
Use backticks instead of apostrophe for the command evaluation. The format changes to (“file-set” | ‘string’ | `command`). Required if you use filenames with spaces. |
FOR /f “eol=; tokens=2,3* delims=, ” %%i IN (myfile.txt) DO @ECHO %%i %%j %%k
Parse each line in myfile.txt, ignoring lines that begin with semicolon, pass 2nd and 3rd tokens into the command, separating each token my either comma or space. Notice how the sequence goes: %i, %j, %k.
FOR /f “usebackq delims==” %%i IN (`set`) DO @ECHO %%i
Enumerate all variables found.
Expansion of variable parameters is also available, see below.
GOTO :eof
Jump to end of file. Handy way of exiting from a script.
IF [NOT] ERRORLEVEL n ..
IF [NOT] EXIST filename …
IF [NOT] string1==string2 …
IF [/i] string1 EQU|NEQ|LSS|LEQ|GTR|GEQ string2 …
The normal IF command is enhanced, too. It can check errorlevels as before, file existance, and compare strings. But is also has new operators. For instance, the “IF ERRORLEVEL 3″ statement can now be written “IF %ERRORLEVEL% LEQ 3″.
/i means case-sensitive (or case-insensitive, I forgot which). Numeric strings evaluate as numbers, not strings.
IF now also supports multi-line statements and ELSE statements, see below.
MD \a\b\c\d
Will create new directories in sequence.
MORE /e
Extended more. These keys are available:
P n – next n lines
S n – skip n lines
F – next file
Q – quit
= – show line number
? – show help line
space – next page
return – next line
MORE +n
Start from line n.
PUSHD \\server\path
Create a temporary drive allocation, starting from Z:, for the particular UNC path. This will be cleared with POPD.
RD /s /q
Very dangerous command.
SET [var[=[value]]]
SET /a [var=]expression
SET /p var=[prompt]
SET only will display all variables. SET P will display all values starting with P. SET P= will clear variable P.
SET /a will perform a calculation, for instance SET /a X=2*2 + 5.
SET /p will prompt for user input and store the result in a variable.
SETLOCAL / ENDLOCAL
Make local changes to the environment. Work all you want with it, then call endlocal to revert back to where you were. Also handy, especially with some of the advanced SET features.
SHIFT [/n]
Shift parameters. Optionally start at the nth position, preserving all elements %0 .. %(n-1).
SORT [/+n] [/o outfile]
Sort may start sorting at the nth position now. Could be good for unwanted stuff in the beginning (timestamp in logs, perhaps). /o is faster than piping.
Interesting ways of treating variable expansion
Some new ways of treating variables are available. Like, string substitution and substring matching.
| %PATH:str1=str2% |
Substitute all occurrences of str1 with str2. |
| %PATH:~10,5% |
Substring, start at position 10 and extract 5 characters. |
| %PATH:~-10% |
Only get the last 10 characters. |
| %PATH:0,-2% |
Extract all but the last 2 characters. |
| |
| %CD% |
The current path |
| %DATE% |
Current date |
| %TIME% |
Current time |
| %RANDOM% |
A random number between 0..32767. |
| %ERRORLEVEL% |
The current errorlevel. |
| |
| %* |
All arguments |
| %0 .. %9 |
Arguments |
| %~1 |
Remove quotes from parameter 1 |
| %~f1 |
Expand to fully qualified filename |
| %~d1 |
Expand to drive letter only |
| %~p1 |
Expand to path only |
| %~n1 |
Expand to file name only |
| %~x1 |
Expand to extension only |
| %~s1 |
Expand to short file name only |
| %~a1 |
Expand to file attributes |
| %~t1 |
Expand to file date/time |
| %~z1 |
Expand to file size |
| %~$PATH:1 |
Search through all directories specified in %PATH%. If the file is found, return the
fully qualified filename in that directory. If the file isn’t found, return blank. |
| %~dp1 |
Expand to drive and path. (Further elements may be combined: %~ftza1 gives a DIR-like output) |
Interesting ways of doing IF and FOR statements
There’s a syntax I’ve never seen either with IF and FOR statements. You can use IF-ELSE-syntax in this way:
IF EXIST hello.txt (
DEL hello.txt
) ELSE (
ECHO hello.txt is missing!
)
…or even…
IF EXIST hello.txt (DEL hello.txt) ELSE (ECHO hello.txt is missing!)
And how about this?
FOR /l %%v IN (1 1 5) DO (
ECHO This is line number %%v.
)
The crucial thing seems to be, in ELSE statements, that ELSE has to be written “on the same line” as the IF statement. This is why ELSE is written on the same line as the parantheses.
So there you are. A whole new way of writing batch files. No extra software needed, just plain old Windows XP.
