Writing a Windows batch script

A batch file in Windows is a plain text file that contains a series of commands to be executed by the command-line interpreter (cmd.exe). These commands are run in the order they appear, making batch files useful for automating repetitive tasks.

A batch file uses the .bat file extension and can be created using Notepad or any other text editor.

:: When echo is turned off, the command prompt doesn't appear in the Command Prompt window.
ECHO OFF

:: The following command writes GeeksforGeeks to the console.
ECHO GeeksforGeeks

:: The following command suspends the processing of a batch program and displays the prompt.
PAUSE

After saving it with a .bat extension. Double click it to run the file. It prints shows:

In the above script, ECHO off cleans up the console by hiding the commands from being printed at the prompt, ECHO prints the text “GeeksforGeeks” to the screen, and then waits for the user to press a key so the program can be ceased.

Basic Batch File Commands and Their Uses

Types of Batch Files in Windows

Lets take another example, Suppose we need to list down all the files/directory names inside a particular directory and save it to a text file, so batch script for it will be,

@ECHO OFF

// A comment line can be added to the batch file with the REM command.
REM This is a comment line.

REM Listing all the files in the directory Program files 
DIR"C:\Program Files" > C:\geeks_list.txt 

ECHO "Done!"

Now when we run this batch script, it will create a file name geeks_list.txt in your C:\ directory, displaying all the files/folder names in C:\Program Files. Another useful batch script that can be written to diagnose your network and check performance of it:

// This batch file checks for network connection problems.
ECHO OFF

// View network connection details
IPCONFIG /all

// Check if geeksforgeeks.com is reachable
PING geeksforgeeks.com

// Run a traceroute to check the route to geeksforgeeks.com
TRACERT geeksforgeeks.com

PAUSE

This script displays:

This script gives information about the current network and some network packet information. ipconfig /all helps to view the network information and ping & tracert to get each packet info. Learn about ping and traceroute here.