Batch file
programming is the native programming offered by the Microsoft Windows
Operating
System.
Batch file is created using any text editors like notepad or WordPad. Batch
files are often used for comprising a sequence of code, do some tasks, can
delete a sequence of a file within a second. Batch file is really helpful for
maintaining system logs
Whenever a
Batch program is executed, it was interpreted line-by-line by the CLI (Command
Line
Interpreter) command.com or the cmd.exe. The commands used while creating a
batch file are case insensitive,(insensitive cases are those that accept both small and upper case letters)
Modes:
There are
two different modes that are supported by DOS (Disk Operating System), they
were,
1.
Interactive Mode.
2. Batch
Mode (Silent Mode).
Interactive
mode:
In
interactive mode, when a command is executed, it interacts with the user for
input and
depending
upon the input supplied by the user Let’s take the ‘del’ command. The ‘del’
command is used for deleting files that reside inside a directory. Now I am
going to delete all the files inside a folder named ‘a’, and when I executed
the following command, it is interacting with me prompting “Are you sure
(Y/N)?”, confirming the deletion operation, and depending upon my input, it
decides what to do. If I hit ‘Y’
then it will delete the files specified, else if I hit ‘N’ then it won’t delete.
C:\>del a
C:\a\*, Are you sure (Y/N)? y
(I think we
should not go for more details of Interactive Mode.)
Batch
Mode:
Batch mode
can also be referred as ‘Silent mode’ or
‘Quiet Mode’,
and this is more opposite to
the
interactive mode. The command that operates at batch mode will never interact
with the user at any
instance,
instead it will take care of every operation by itself.
For
example, I am going to explain this by using the same ‘del’ command. There is a switch available
for
the ‘del’ command, which makes the command to
operate at silent mode, and that switch is ‘/Q’
C:\>del /Q a
C:\>
In this
case, the command is not at all interacting with me, whether to delete those
file or not.
In the
above example, I have tried to delete the same files in the same folder by
using the same command
but with a
different switch. Anyhow both the commands will perform the same operation but
the mode it
operates
differs.
In next
tutorial we will learn How to create a Batch file program.
Stay
with us.
