Batch Scripting Documentation

Question

Is there some nice documentation for windows batch scripting I can download and refer to while offline?

Answer 1

Google hits, for "windows batch scripting documentation" - first page:

• http://labmice.techtarget.com/scripting/batchfiles.htm
• http://www.allenware.com/icsw/icswidx.htm

Answer 2

You can always look at the command help by typing one of:

<command> /?
help <command>

And to see a complete list of default batch commands you just type:

help

Also, you can look up the commands in Windows Help. Just click on "Start" -> "Help and Support", then search for "cmd reference" and you will get the "Command-line reference A-Z" page in Full-text Search Matches. It's a complete list of all cmd commands (some of the are only available in batch scripts) and other command line applications.

Answer 3

Here's an 8-page PDF you can print out: Win32 Shell Scripting Tutorial.

Answer 4

Consider using PowerShell instead, if you can. More power, fewer headaches. It's the way of the future, scripting-wise.

You sound like you have a lot of learning ahead of you. If you do that learning in PowerShell instead of batch, you'll be in a better position at the end.

Answer 5

I can recommend:

An A-Z Index of the Windows XP command line.

It is more thorough than help and most importantly it provides several examples for each command. Example: FIND. There are also cross-references to other commands.

For offline reading you can capture the pages by using e.g. Wget (or some other tool that can follow links and down the content). I use Bart Puype's Wget binary for Windows.

(There is a similar one for PowerShell: "An A-Z Index of Windows PowerShell commands".)

Answer 6

while its useful to learn batch, sometimes using batch can be quite a hassle, especially when it comes to things like number crunching, text file parsing, HTML parsing etc etc. Its better to also equip yourself with knowledge of scripting using languages such as Perl,Python. Natively, you can also learn how to use vbscript/jscript. Here the guide you can download and read offline. Lastly,