secretGeek.netThe Lost Art of Batch Programming
No matter what other interesting skills you acquire, an ability to write DOS batch files is a skill that you will cherish throughout your life. And should you survive to a hundred and five, batch programs may be the one thing that remains unchanged.
Piping, Pinging, setting the path, echoing.... all the good stuff...
Here's an example of using a batch program to stop an application (CALC.exe in this case) from being run twice on the one machine.
@ECHO Off
IF EXIST C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt GOTO RUNNING
ipconfig > C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt
ECHO PROGRAM STARTED...
CALC.EXE
ECHO PROGRAM FINISHED
IF EXIST C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt DEL C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt
GOTO END
:RUNNING
ECHO FILE IS ALREADY RUNNING
:END
IF EXIST C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt GOTO RUNNING
ipconfig > C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt
ECHO PROGRAM STARTED...
CALC.EXE
ECHO PROGRAM FINISHED
IF EXIST C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt DEL C:\%COMPUTERNAME%.txt
GOTO END
:RUNNING
ECHO FILE IS ALREADY RUNNING
:END
This example used the following:
- @
- ECHO
- ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES (%COMPUTERNAME%)
- IF
- EXIST
- GOTO
- REDIRECTION (>)
- DEL
- LABELS (:)
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