I recently exchanged several emails with a long-time UNIX administrator who
was new to writing command shell scripts. I realized that many new Windows administrators
would benefit from a simple command shell scriptwriting Q&A. The following
information will help administrators set up their scripting environment.
I'd like to learn how to write Windows scripts, but I'm not sure which language
to use (e.g., command shell scripting, VBScript, Perl). Is there a preferable
language?
Although many scripting languages are available, command shell scripting
is a great place to start. Administrators need to be familiar with command shell
scripting because they sometimes need to modify or update legacy command shell
scripts in their environment. In addition, some applications use scripts to
start services or perform other operations that administrators need to troubleshoot.
Being able to examine command shell code and quickly determine a script's operation
is often useful. Even if shell scripting isn't your primary scripting language,
you need to be familiar with command shell scripting because it's useful to
call some utilities and commands from scripts written in other languages (e.g.,
VBScript, Perl).
I've heard that .bat files' functionality is limited. Is this statement accurate? . . .
