Question

What are batch files useful for? They just seem to be used to make viruses and other things…but it seems like shell scripting to me.

Whats the uses for batch files?

Answer 1

From Batch file article at Wikipedia:

Batch files are useful for running a
sequence of executables automatically
and are often used by system
administrators to automate tedious
processes. Unix-like operating
systems (such as Linux) have a similar
type of file called a shell script.

A simple example:

for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%i in ('dir /s /b /a:d *svn') do (  rd /s /q "%%i")

If you save the above line in a file called ClearSVNFolders.bat and after that execute a double click you’ll delete every folder named svn that resides inside a root path…

You automated the whole process. You could easily spend hours doing the above task if you had a deep root directory, that is, one containing thousands of folders. 🙂