Introduction
Batch file programming is the native programming offered
by the Microsoft Windows Operating System. Batch file is created using any text
editors like notepad, WordPad, WinWord or so on, which comprises of a sequence
of built-in commands used to perform some often done tasks like deleting a series
of files of same type or of different type, creating logs, clearing unwanted
craps from your computer and even for creating a batch VIRUS.
Whenever a Batch program is executed, it was interpreted
line-by-line by the CLI (Command Line Interpreter) command.com or the cmd.exe.
Batch file is really helpful in automating tedious tasks and for maintaining
system logs. The commands used while creating a batch file are case
insensitive, in the sense that it may 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, the further processes are carried out. For example, 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
Batch Mode:
Batch mode can also be referred as ‘Silent mode’ or ‘Quiet Mode’, and
this is mere 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.
