{"id":76,"date":"2009-05-12T00:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T00:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.roysac.com\/blog\/wp-admin\/2009\/05\/ms-dos-commands-wild-cards-inputoutput-redirection-and-variables\/"},"modified":"2009-05-12T00:44:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-12T00:44:00","slug":"ms-dos-commands-wild-cards-inputoutput-redirection-and-variables","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.roysac.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/ms-dos-commands-wild-cards-inputoutput-redirection-and-variables\/","title":{"rendered":"MS DOS Commands, Wild Cards, Input\/Output Redirection and Variables"},"content":{"rendered":"

While I was looking for ways to make my life easier by automating things, I rediscovered the MS DOS<\/em> batch features of the latest MS DOS<\/em> release and even more extended version of MS DOS<\/em> for the early Microsoft Windows<\/em> 32 bit Operating Systems, like Windows 95<\/em>, Windows CE<\/em> and Windows 98 (dubbed MS DOS 7<\/em>).<\/p>\n

\"dospromptani\" You can accomplish a lot of things right from the DOS<\/em> prompt without needing to program fancy Windows<\/em> Applications or something like that. <\/p>\n

Many things where I thought the use of ???real??? programming languages like Visual Basic<\/em> or VBScript<\/em> would be necessary, can be accomplished by using sequences of MS DOS<\/em> commands in a Batch File (.BAT<\/em>). <\/p>\n

BATCH<\/em> commands are supported by any Microsoft Windows<\/em> Operation System right out of the box. You do not have to install anything, not mess around with permissions nor do you require Administrator<\/em> rights and permission to write, edit or execute batch scripts.<\/p>\n

The Basics for Newbies<\/h3>\n

To learn about the available commands and functions that you can use in BATCH<\/em> files, open a MS DOS<\/em> window first. To do that, click on ???Start<\/em>???, then ???Run<\/em>???, type ???cmd??? and then press the ENTER<\/em> key on your keyboard.<\/p>\n

In the MS DOS<\/em> window type ???help??? and then press ENTER<\/em>. Returned will be a list of commands with a brief description of their purpose right next to each of them. Type ???help COMMAND???, where COMMAND<\/em> stands for any command that was listed by ???help<\/em>???, to get a detailed documentation and description of the individual DOS<\/em> command. There is actually a BATCH<\/em> file that was written by Rob Van der Woude<\/a>, which generates a HTML<\/em> document from those ???help<\/em>??? commands, something like a documentation or reference, if you will. You can download the script source here<\/a>. Save it as AllHelp.bat<\/a> and then execute it. When it is done, you should have a new file with the name ???allhelp.htm<\/em>??? in the same folder as the batch file itself. You can open the HTML<\/em> file with any web browser.<\/p>\n

That covers the basics. The rest of this post is more advanced and for people who are familiar with the basic MS DOS<\/em> batch features and syntax.<\/p>\n

MS DOS (and Windows) Wild Cards<\/h3>\n

I will explain the wildcards characters used in MS DOS and also Windows for File and Folder Filtering in commands like the “DIR<\/em>” command and other file based operations. It causes sometimes for confusion and even confused me that I decided to look it up and also conducted some tests to verify the claims made by various people. <\/p>\n

There are two (2) wild card characters that can be used for the file system commands in MS DOS and Windows; the question mark character (?<\/strong>) and the asterix or star character (*<\/strong>). <\/p>\n