Question

I’m creating a simple bat file that plays some ASCII animation stored in 120 .txt files. My script works but it works too fast. I’d like to find a way to slow it dow a bit. I’ve tried the TIMEOUT 1 command but it only plays 1 picture per second which is too slow. Is there a workable solution without moving from Windows 7 command line?

This is my script so far

@echo off
MODE CON: COLS=91 LINES=41
cls
:3
setlocal enableextensions enabledelayedexpansion
FOR /R %%i in (*.txt) do (type "%%i"
)
goto :3

Answer 1

You could use a FOR /L loop to introduce a delay. Here is a script that introduces an approximate 100 msec delay. A simple test near the top computes how many iterations are required to approximate 100 msec. The number will vary between machines. Adjust the definition of msecDelay as required to get your desired result.

@echo off
setlocal

:: Compute the number of iterations required to get the desired delay
set msecDelay=100
set ticks=100000
set "start=%time%"
for /l %%N in (1 1 %ticks%) do rem
set "stop=%time%"
for /f "tokens=3,4 delims=:.," %%A in ("%start%") do set /a start=1%%A%%B-10000
for /f "tokens=3,4 delims=:.," %%A in ("%stop%") do set /a stop=1%%A%%B-10000
if %start% gtr %stop% set /a stop+=6000
set /a delay=msecDelay*ticks/(stop-start)/10

MODE CON: COLS=91 LINES=41
cls
:3
FOR /R %%i in (*.txt) do (
  type "%%i"
  for /l %%n in (1 1 %delay%) do rem
)
goto :3

I’m wondering if you will get better results by moving CLS within the loop, just before your TYPE statement.