phaq

I just trapped myself while hacking up a batch file.
Used to shell scripting I wanted to add a delay to the batch using “sleep”.

Dough! Bad Idea! Bad command or filename. Smash your head here to continue {(x)}!

So I winded up my memories from stoneage. Wasn’t there the choice command!?

Yeah, after some lurking around with the ‘/?’ feature I had stuck it together:

choice /c 1 /d 1 /t 1 > nul

While

• “/c 1” sets the choice values (1 is my value)
• “/d 1” sets the default choice value (which is 1 from above)
• “/t 1” sets the timeout to 1 second (or whatever is appropriate)
• “> nul” means the same as “>/dev/null”: send output to nirvana (notice there being only one ‘l’ however)

Of course this may be bothersome to type if you use it often, so a “batch function” may be better, especially when you need other batch tricks to get around DOS command limitations (lazy man’s approach: create a second batch file for it).

@echo off

rem *******************
rem check args
rem *******************

:checkargs

if "%1/" == "func/" goto callfunc
goto main

:_checkargs

rem *******************
rem call functions
rem *******************

:callfunc
 shift

 rem we could do "goto %1" instead
 rem if there is a lot of functions
 if "%1/" == "sleep/" goto sleep

 goto exit

:_callfunc

rem *******************
rem function sleep
rem *******************

:sleep
 shift

 choice /c 1 /d 1 /t %1 > nul

 goto exit

:_sleep

rem *******************
rem main body
rem *******************

:main
 echo hello, going to sleep now
 call %0 func sleep 1

 echo sleep is over, good bye

 goto exit

:_main

rem *******************
rem exit handler
rem *******************

:exit
 rem if there is anything left to do, do it now.

:_exit

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