Batch File Template

I've done some major work over the last few weeks with batch files.  In fact, I just finished a tool that utilizes 5 different languages (Windows batch, Perl, VBScript, HTML, & SQL) to accomplish some pretty cool stuff.  In the process of building the tool, I had to set some standards in the way I work with the various programming languages.
One major step was to finalize (at least in my mind) my method of writing batch files.  So, I came up with the following template that I'll probably use for any projects going forward.  I'll explain the various features:



The first section of code (lines 2-7) sets the default variables that this script will use.  This section can be used to declare the default value for any number of variables.  It also sets the current version and last updated date.

The next section (lines 8-19) branches out to the built in help.  This will not execute the main program and instead will go to the help section (lines 42-51) and execute the code there.  Most of the time, I just put echo statements there to echo the help documentation out to the screen.  The GOTO:EOF simply returns execution control to the calling process.  For help this means returning to the command prompt.  If some arguments are required, you can easily branch to the help section by unREMarking line 9.  This will execute the help commands and exit if no arguments are specified.  This is handy because you can then just run the batch file without any arguments and see the help (the way most built in commands work).

The next section (lines 20-26) reads in the command line arguments.  If the switches for variable1 and variable2 are present, the value immediately after the switch is read into the variable (for numbers and strings).  If the switch for variable3 is present, variable3 is set to 1 (boolean).  The shift and GOTO Loop commands cycle through all the arguments until none remain (line 21).

The next section (lines 27-35) is the main section of the program.  The first thing that happens is that the version is echoed by calling the version function (lines 52-54).  In this case, :version acts like a function (with no returning value).  This is handy since version can be called multiple times in different places in the main program execution (for example outputting the version at the end of any output files).  The version function can be extended to include author information or links to online documentation.

The next section (lines 39-41) is a custom function that is called from the main program.  It is called on line 34 with one argument.  Normally arguments separated by a space are treated as two, but these are surrounded by double quotes, which makes it one.  The %~1 on line 40 grabs that argument and outputs the argument without quotes.