Tutorial on Basic Windows 2000 DOS

By Space Between

A simple Break in of simple DOS

The ETA of this tutorial is 15 minutes to 1 hour. (Depending on you).

I know many people are intimidated at first by a CL (Command Line) interface.
3 questions always pop in the minds of those who have never used a CL before.

Q1. "Oh my...am i going to break something?"
A1. No you're not. It is so hard to break something in DOS it's disgusting.
.......You can of course, but you would have to already know DOS and even
.......then have a desire to cause yourself some headache's.

Q2. "OK, I'm not going to break anything but what's the point?"
A2. Simple, speed. Nobody creates a script that would take longer to
.......do in a GUI (Graphical User Interface). If you were to, it would
.......be defeating scripting.

Q3. "Fair, enough. But i already got everything i need in GUI's"
A3. Do you? Do you really? A lot of programs require install. Then a load
.......time just to bring up the GUI. Then the worst part, reading the help
.......and figuring out what the GUI does. With scripting, there is no help
.......required because you know EXACTLY what you wrote and what it's going
.......to do. Best part, just takes one click and the entire thing runs and
.......does all it needs to do. No interaction required.

Although I don't do win scripting in any shape or form anymore, I'm going to use Win2k's basic DOS features. Win9x just doesnt cut it unless you want to use memory in more ways than one. 9x is bad for its default scripting routines, without repeatedly comparing something to a null value, creating child shells, and creating multiple temporary files, 9x scripting is horrible. If you want to do that, well that is beyond the scope of this tutorial so you'll have to email me or figure it out on the web. A LOT of info for that is on the web, that's where I learned to do the "tricky" 9x stuff. Even if you wanted to know how to do that you would have to know all I'm about to mention first.

What will all this do, simply create a cataloging script for your cds/dvds.
You will have to use a little of your own imagination but all information for doing this I will present.

Here are the points that will be covered

00. What a file is under win enviroment.
01. What a variable is in %win2k% batch and how to create them.
02. What echo echo. @echo off does.
03. What operators like > and >> and | do.
04. What a ::comment is.
05. What & does and how to use it &::creatively.
06. What 'DIR' and 'SORT' is and does
07. What a * and a ? mean to the DOS shell.
08. What GOTO _is when used with :_labels, also using PING to create a delay.
09. What if "statements"=="are and what they do".
10. What a basic "for" loop is/does.
11. How to use low interger values with variables.
12. How to parse strings into substrings.
13. How to echo non-echoable characters.
14. How to pass %arguments to a .bat file.
15. Summary

Click here to GOTO _start