Batch File

PowerShell is a popular and extremely versatile tool, but is it a good idea to use PowerShell in logon scripts? Let’s try to find out! Setting the Stage I am going to compare the resource utilization of the following languages frequently used with logon scripts:

With all the love PowerShell is getting these days one might think that the golden age of (Windows) scripting has finally begun. Maybe it has. But one man’s nirvana can be another man’s hell.

Determining day, month and year on the command line is surprisingly difficult if the solution is to work across locales, i.e. on international systems with different regional settings. Although we can use the variables %DATE% and %TIME% their contents is specific to the locale. If set to German, the date is displayed in the format dd.MM.yyyy, if set to English (United States), the date format is M/d/yyyy.

Sometimes you need a list of all the files and/or folders in a directory with their full path, without any additional information. “DIR /B” would be the right command, if it only printed out the full path (it does that only if combined with the recursion parameter /S).

The Windows command line is a powerful beast. It can be made to do things one would never have thought possible, but it can be very tricky indeed to find out just how to make it jump through a particular hoop.

From time to time the question gets asked how a batch file or console program can be executed silently or hidden, i.e. without a console window popping up. If you do not know what I am talking about: press Win+R, type “help” and press ENTER. A black console window will open, execute the HELP command and close again. Often, this is not desired. Instead, the command should execute without any visible window.