Batch File - Other Windows Scripting Languages

Other Windows Scripting Languages

The cmd.exe command processor that interprets .cmd files is supported in all 32- and 64-bit versions of Windows up to at least the 2011 Windows 8 preview. COMMAND.EXE, which interprets .BAT files, was supported in all 16- and 32-bit versions up to at least Windows 8 preview.

While the more powerful 2006 Windows PowerShell is favored in later versions of Windows that support it, Microsoft was also using .cmd files as far as, at least, Windows Server 2008. An example is servermanagercmd.exe which incorporates the entire set of Server Manager functions for Windows Server 2008.

There are other, later and more powerful, scripting languages produced by Microsoft for Windows:

• KiXtart (.kix) - developed by a Microsoft employee in 1991, specifically to meet the need for commands useful in a network logon script while retaining the simple 'feel' of a .cmd file.
• Windows Script Host (.vbs and .js) - released in 1998, (consisting of cscript.exe and wscript.exe) runs scripts written in VBScript or JScript. It can run them in windowed mode (with the wscript.exe host) or in console-based mode (with the cscript.exe host). They have been a part of Windows since Windows 98.
• Windows PowerShell (.ps1) - released in 2006 by Microsoft and can operate with Windows XP (SP2/SP3) and later versions. PowerShell can operate both interactively (from a command-line interface) and also via saved scripts, and has a strong resemblance to Unix shells.

Cross-platform scripting tools including Perl, Python, Ruby and Rexx and Php are available for Windows.

Script files will run if the filename without extension is entered. There are rules of precedence governing interpretation of, say DoThis if several of DoThis.cmd, DoThis.bat, DoThis.exe, etc. exist; by default DoThis.com has highest priority. This default order may be modified in newer operating systems by the user-settable PATHEXT environment variable.