Windows NT Shell Scripting is a comprehensive reference for network professionals. It is the only book available on the practical use of the Windows NT shell scripting language. The book begins with a high-level introduction to the shell language itself, then describes the shell commands that are useful for controlling or managing different components of a network, i.e. file management, etc. The second part of the book is a comprehensive reference of all the commands, organized by function, for easy reference by the reader.

Table of Contents:
I. THE SCRIPT LANGUAGE. 1. The Basics of Scripts. What Is a Script? The Console Window. The Options Tab. The Font Tab. The Layout Tab. The Colors Tab. Introducing Scripts. Script Arguments. Special Script Lines. 2. The Windows NT Command Shell. Command Shell Basics. Command Shell Modes. CMD.EXE and COMMAND.COM. Starting a Command Shell. Terminating a Command Shell. Nesting Command Shells. Command Line Editing. Basic Character Editing. Template Editing. Command History Editing. Command Completion Editing. DOSKEY and Command Macros. Launching Applications from the Shell. Internal and External Commands. The PATH Command and PATHEXT Variable. Command Search Sequence. File Associations. Integrating New Script Languages with the Shell. The START Command. Controlling Script Output. REW. CLS. COLOR. TITLE. @. ECHO. NOW [RK]. Command Redirection. Running Multiple Commands. Using Command Filters. MORE. SORT. FIND. CLIP [RK]. The Windows NT Command Scheduler. 3. Script Parameters and Variables. Variable Basics. Environment Variable Sources. Accessing Variables Using the Control Panel. Setting Variables. Variable Size Limits. Variable Substitution. Undefined Variables and Literal Percent Character Handling. Recursive Substitution. Returning Procedure Values. Substitution and Command Syntax. Variable Scope. Using SETLOCAL and ENDLOCAL. Variable Tunneling. Special Variables. Advanced SET Commands. Basic Expression Syntax. Number Formats. Logical Bit Operators. Assignment Operators. Evaluating Multiple Expressions. Special Variable Syntax. String Substitution. String Indexing. Indexed and Named Arrays. Script Parameters and Arguments. Parameter Substitution. Special Parameter Syntax. Using Double Quotes. 4. Control Flow, Procedures, and Script Nesting. Simple Control Flow. Chaining Scripts. Nesting Scripts. Labels and the GOTO Command. Script Procedures. The CALL Command. Procedure State and Variable Scope. Passing Arguments to Procedures. Returning Values from Procedures. Procedure Structure. Using a MAIN Procedure. Complete Procedure Skeleton. Script Libraries. The IF Command. Simple IF Commands. Advanced IF Commands. Interactive Commands. PAUSE. TIMEOUT [RK]. SLEEP [RK]. CHOICE. COPY. The FOR Command. The File Iterator FOR Command. The Directory Iterator FOR Command. The Numeric Iterator FOR Command. The Test Parser FOR Command. Variable Recursion Using the FOR Command. II. REAL WORLD SCRIPTING. 5. A Scripting Toolkit. Building Scripts. Standard Script Skeleton. Standard Library Skeleton. An Example Library. VARDEL. PARSECMDLINE. GETARG. GETSWITCH. FINDSWITCH. REGSETM and REGSETU. REGGETM and REGGETU. REGDELM and REGDELU. SRAND. RAND. RESOLVE. GETINPUTLINE. GETSYNCFILE. SETSYNCFILE. DELSYNCFILE. WAITSYNCFILE. GETTEMPNAME. 6. User Management Scripts. User Account Creation. The MAKEUSR Script. Syntax. Switches. Description. Example. Implementation. The USRQUOTA Script. Syntax. Switches. Description. Example. Implementation. The MTPLOGEON.BAT Script. Implementation. Customization. 7. Miscellaneous Scripts. Ready to Use Scripting Techniques. The UNCBACK Script. Syntax. Description. Example. Implementation. The XCPTEST Script. Syntax. Switches. Description. Example. Implementation. The REPL Script. Syntax. Switches. Description. Example Implementation. The ANIMAL Script. Description. Implementation. A Final Word on Scripting. III. SCRIPTING COMMAND REFERENCE. Command Reference. Account Management Commands. System Management Commands. Application Control Commands. Network Management Commands. File and Directory Commands. Scripting Language Commands. Alphabetical Listing of Commands. ADDUSERS [RK] ASSOC ASSOCIATE [RK] AT, WINAT [RK] ATTRIB AUDITPOL [RK] AUTOEXEC.BAT CACLS, XCACLS [RK] CALL CD CHDIR, CD CHOICE [RK] CLIP [RK] CLS CMD COLOR COMMAND Command Line Editing Command Line Syntax COPY DATE DEL, ERASE DIR DIRUSE [RK] DISKUSE [RK] DOSKEY DUMPEL [RK] ECHO ENDLOCAL ERASE EXIT FC FIND FINDSTR FOR FTYPE GLOBAL [RK] GOTO IF IFMEMBER [RK] INSTSRV [RK] KILL [RK] Labels LOCAL [RK] LOGEVENT [RK] LOGOFF [RK] MD MKDIR, MD MORE MOVE NET ACCOUNTS NET COMPUTER NET CONFIG SERVER NET CONFIG WORKSTAT ION NET CONTINUE, NET PAUSE, NET START, NET STOP NET FILE NET GROUP, NET LOCALGROUP NET LOCALGROUP NET NAME NET PAUSE NET SEND NET SESSION NET SHARE NET START NET STATISTICS NET STOP NET TIME NET USE NET USER NET VIEW NOW [RK] NTBACKUP Parameter Syntax PATH PAUSE PERMCOPY [RK] POPD PROMPT PULIST [RK] PUSHD RD REG [RK] REM REN, RENAME RENAME REPLACE RMDIR, RD RMTSHARE [RK] ROBOCOPY [RK] SC [RK] SCLIST [RK] SCOPY [RK] SET SETLOCAL SHIFT SHUTDOWN [RK] SLEEP [RK] SOON [RK] SORT SRVINFO [RK] Standard Variables START SUBST TIME TIMEOUT [RK] TITLE TRANSLATE [RK] TYPE USRSTAT [RK] Variable Syntax VER WHOAMI [RK] VINAT XCACLS XCOPY. IV. APPENDIXES. A. The RCMD Resource Kit Utility. RCMD Client and Target Computer Installation. Command Execution. RCMD Security Features. B. Other Useful Command Line Tools.