An example would be if you had to load microsoft’s editing program, you would of had to type the name of the specific drive that the editing program was on, and then the exact name of the program with no spelling mistakes of course. If Microsoft edit were in a directory named “programs” you would initiate the application with “C:>programs\edit.com” after which the program would load up. Pretty boring stuff i know… This is just a simple short command so imagine if you had an application that was several or more subdirectories deep? You might see yourself typing in a CMD that’s as long as the width of your computer screen lol. So imagine what it would be like if you needed to type in these tedious commands every time you wanted to start a program!
This is the reason why batch files were so popular. Batch files are little documents with commands written in them and when executed they process each command without you having to type in each CMD manually. Eventually when windows was introduced, you no longer had to type in commands manually each time as now all you had to was point and click with a mouse. However this didn’t kill off the usefullness of making batch files infact they’re just as popular today with some groups as they were back in MS-DOS.
Using windows XP or Vista, these batch files can save you a load of time by auto executing several programs and tasks at once with just one click of a mouse! The best thing is you don’t need to be a programmer of any kind. Batch files are just plain text documents that can be built using windows notepad. As an example you could make a batch file that auto loaded several websites that you always visit everyday or several programs that you use and it just saves time as you only have to click once as apposed to clicking 5 programs one after the other.
All you need is to know where these programs are located on your computer. For instance i might load up Google, MS word, Dreamweaver and photoshop on a daily basis. Instead of opening each one manually i can just write a batch file to do it for me. I’d open up notepad and type in the following:
START “http://google.com”
START “c:/program files/microsoft office/word.exe”
START “c:/program files/dreamweaver”
START “c:/program files/adobe/photoshop”
I would then save this file as say “loadapps.bat” some where on my desktop for quick access. Now every time i click on this file all those programs i mentioned will auto load on their own. Now to make it even more automated i could drop this batch file in my windows start up folder. Then those programs would actually start up each time i boot into windows.
Of course there are other unique ideas you can come up with for use with batch files, but the main thing is you know how to make them now as they will save a few minutes here and there which might not sound like alot, but if you’re someone who uses their computer alot, then trust me it’ll take the repetitiveness out of your everday tasks that can become a mundane affair.
