I found that TechNet has references for the Windows command line utilities. Much of these are just a rehash of the help you'd get with /? but at least they're easier to read... This is a list of commands for Windows Server 2003 (most apply to Windows...

One of the obstacles to frequent posting (at least mine) is that the types of posts I typically make include code. Code that I would like to be formatted nicely. Unfortunately, this previously meant hand-crafting HTML to make it all look nice. In some...

Earlier , I tried to come up with a definitive list of illegal filesystem names, but it seems this is already documented. Who knew? http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?id=74496

For those of you who are more interested in the gritty details of command line redirection , RaymondC has posted a couple of great articles recently on his excellent The Old New Thing blog. The first discusses how (and more importantly, why ) the redirection...

The other day, someone posted a message at work asking for a way to find out the drive letter for partition 1 on the first disk. The first response offered this: C:>echo list volume | diskpart Microsoft DiskPart version 5.1.3565 Copyright...

Many languages provide a mechanism to make their code look pretty. VBScript, for example, assumes one statement per line, but including an underscore at the end of the line indicates that your statement continues on the next line. Normal WScript.Echo...

It's pretty easy to deal with up to 9 arguments in batch through built-in variables %1 through %9 . For example: echoargs.cmd @echo off echo %1 echo %2 echo %3 echo %4 echo %5 echo %6 echo %7 echo %8 echo %9 If you feed this A B C D E F G H I, you...

Earlier , I used >nul 2>&1 to suppress the output of a command, and the question was brought up as to why this was "better" than just >nul . To understand what's going on, you need to know that there are two streams of output from any...

I spend a lot of time in a CMD window. I mean a lot of time. Often I'd like to open a web page, but opening up Internet Explorer and navigating my way to the page in question is such a chore. I'm lazy. I don't like mouse-clicks. Enter the quicky batch...

Here's something I'd never noticed until today, when I discovered it quite by accident. In general, to run a program in a different directory, you specify the path with backslashes, such as C:\WINDOWS\system32\notepad.exe . This should be no surprise...

There's a fine line between an assumption and a bug. If the assumptions are spelled out ahead of time, then it's not a bug if the script does what's expected, taking the assumptions into consideration. Having disclaimed that, then, here are some of...

In the previous post, there was a fair amount of code and basically no explanation... Here's how it breaks down: Naïve method: set FILENAME=basename-%RANDOM% CMD has a built-in variable called %RANDOM% . Simply put, it returns a random value...

Someone today was asking how to create unique filenames. They had some process which ran in a loop, and they wanted to direct the output of that process to a file, but rather than always overwriting the same file, they wanted to keep history using distinctive...

There are a couple of scripts that have been with me since the beginning of time. I don't use them that much anymore, but they occasionally come in handy. I'm always pleasantly surprised to find that I still have them when I need them. One makes files...

It occurs to me that my mistypings of 'notepad' and 'exit' are probably more the result of muscle-memory since I type those so often. The mistakes I make are due to one hand hitting its letter before the other (correct) hand hitting its. Just a thought...

Some scripts are complex and do lots of cool stuff. Others are simple and save a bunch of time. I have a couple of scripts which prove to be so useful that I don't know when I'm using them anymore. I tend to type faster than I think (or get my fingers...

In the beginning, there was DOS. And DOS had batch files - little scripts that ended in .BAT. So, when I started writing and collecting a few useful ones, I created a directory, C:\BELFRY in which to keep my .BATs. Get it? Bats? Belfrey? Oh, never mind...

There are a couple of books that I have found to be particularly useful. Whether you're a beginner or you have your black belt in script-fu, you'll find them to be excellent references. Windows NT Shell Scripting is an excellent place to start. Tim...

The Windows 2003 Resource Kit has a number of indispensible tools. For scripting, the two handiest are sleep and robocopy. Grab these - you'll need them.

I wonder how many first posts in blogs are given the title "First post!". I'm guessing a good 75%. So the idea behind this particular blog is this: anyone can write a script (even you!), but it takes work to write a good * script. Here you'll learn...