What's the Windows equivalent of a UNIX shell script?

Question

I want to have an executable file that will call some other programs. The way I would do this in Linux is with a simple bash script that looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
echo "running some-program"
/home/murat/some-program arg1 arg2

What's the best way to do this kind of thing under Windows?

Answer 1

Take a look at PowerShell, which is the closest you will get to a true scripting language like you have in Unix. Other than that, for simple things such as simply runnning an application, take a look at Windows command script/MS-DOS batch files.

Answer 2

You could go with either an old school batch file (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batch_file) or you can go with a brand new shiny Windows PowerShell script (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx).

I use batch for simple operations and PowerShell for complex scripts that also involve data processing.

Answer 3

There are a number of scripting options on windows:

• Batch files
• VBScript/CScript/JScript (very powerful when combined with WMI)
• PowerShell
• You could install Perl, Python, or other engine
• You can install unix tools, via Cygwin for example, to get make most of the common unix commands available in windows as well.
• Since we're all (mostly?) programmers here, there's nothing stopping you from making a .exe file to do what you want.

Answer 4

You can use a Windows batch file. Find more information in the Wikipedia article.