Why you need a bat file

Long before the emergence of modern multitasking operating systems with powerful capabilities and attractive interface, MS-DOS existed as the main operating system in the computer world. Very simple and practically "weightless" by today's standards, it coped magnificently not only with the organization of the human-machine dialogue, but also with a wide range of other tasks that the computer of that time had to perform. Already at that time the computer had powerful capabilities, he knew what the file extension was and took it into account in his work.

Virtually all the subsequent Microsoft Windows products have retained in their work the operating principles laid down by the OS, their predecessor. The user still retains the right to manage the computer from the so-called command line, and displaying the file extension allowed not only to determine their purpose, but also to help the machine cope with their processing.

Follow the chain Start => Run => Run the program in the opened window, type cmd and click OK. After the perfect manipulations, we are given the opportunity to work in the command line mode. Despite the seeming archaism of this method of communicating with a computer and not very attractive interface, this mode allows performing a number of useful operations, without which it would be problematic for a professional user to get by.

One of the options for using the command line functionality is the ability to use command files. A list of commands that are understandable to a computer in the form of text, saved in a bat-file, allows to automate a huge number of tasks for their processing. For a number of technical writers, this need arises from time to time. Of course, the task of single processing of an unlimited number of files can be performed using DITA or DocBook technologies. You can also process each of them with a separate command that you manually "hammer" into execution. This method will not only take a lot of time, but can lead to a number of random errors (typos of the operator), which practically can not be determined.

Using bat-file, the user uses it only as an option from all the allowable processing tools in the OS. And in MS-DOS, and in the subsequent products of Microsoft Windows, this method is the simplest tool for automating the process of processing files (directories). An alternative to this method is used with the 98th version of Windows Script (ing) Host. You can program these operations in Python, Perl or Ruby. But it takes time to master these powerful tools.

The command bat-file for writing does not require a long study of the principles of MS-DOS. Having studied several available commands built into the command processor, rules for writing them and some nuances of compilation, you can safely get down to work.

Of course, it will take time to study the full manual or textbook on the commands of the MS-DOS operating system, but the whole beauty in the process of writing command files is that you can start this work with a minimum set of knowledge, then expand it if necessary. To write a bat-file, you do not need complex compilers and debuggers - a fairly simple notebook.

In this case, each line is a command and the entire list is executed sequentially. In addition, when executing the entire list of commands, conditions can be checked, variants can be selected, variables can be used, mass processing of files and other tools provided by the instructions for the operation of the shell can be applied.

Studied and tested for many years of existence MS-DOS tools are widely used to this day. And although in its pure form this operating system is no longer found in the body of ultramodern platforms of recent generations, they all reserve the right to use the command-line functionality in its original form.