Microsoft operating system batch programming

Microsoft operating system batch programming has evolved along with the product releases of these operating systems. Interpreters are provided with these operating systems that provide two distinct modes of work. First is the interactive mode, in which the user types commands which are then executed immediately. The second is the batch mode, which executes a predefined sequence of commands, aka batch scripts, stored as a text file with the extension .bat. The original concepts for both functionalities is almost certainly derived from the Unix shells, although most programmers would find Microsoft scripting language less able than its Unix counterparts.

Originally, the MS-DOS operating system provided a batch script interpreter named command.com. Batch scripts for MS-DOS' command.com are composed of a relatively simple set of commands interpreted directly by command.com (aka internal commands) and provided utilities that exist as separate executables (aka external commands). The evolution of this branch of batch scripting proceeded through the releases of MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98 and finally Windows ME.

The latest Microsoft operating systems provide two batch script interpreters, command.com and cmd.exe. These programs accompany the NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems and provide a richer set of both internal and external commands and batch script syntax.

Various non-Microsoft interpreters exist that provide enhanced batch script command syntax. An example of these is the 4DOS product.

Several non-Microsoft implementations of batch script compilers exist to convert batch scripts to directly executable programs. The quality-of-implementation of these compilers varies widely.