I don't really have a specific question here. Are there any general guidelines on things like error checking and working with strings, long path names and folders with spaces between them, etc, when working with BAT files? Are there any hidden, or undocumented features in the CMD.exe shell?

I know that Unix is more powerful in this regard. Would that CygWin give me some more capabilities?

You'd be surprised how much you can accomplish with batch files in Windows NT variants. I've done a lot of work in this area.

Batch files in Windows don't really compare to proper scripting in Unix-based operating systems, they are a poor substitute. However you can often get a lot done with them.

Another option is to use a scripting engine like WinBatch, but long ago I came to the realization that as soon as I needed to move to something as big as WinBatch, I might as well just code up something in Visual Basic and be done with it.

If you could be more specific about what you're trying to get done, perhaps I could give pointers. Make sure to include details of which platforms it needs to run on. Because often the behavior of a given batch file will be different between NT and 98.

I don't have time to find it all right now, as I'm tired and I seldom use it, but check out Windows Scripting Host. It's a MS product that's probably in your OS right now that allows you to script stuff using VBScript and Java/J/ECMA script and some other stuff, too. It's worked well for me when I've needed to script stuff in Windows.

I agree about WSH, it is very useful for calling COM objects and moving files around. It is not particularly useful though if you need to call a bunch of command line tools, you are better off using .bat files in that case.

I thought of something specific. One of the things I've always wanted is some way to do a simple search and replace with strings and something that can do this with a bunch of files in the same directory.

Ah, if you want to do sort of think on a regular (or even occasional) basis then grab yourself a copy of TextPad http://www.textpad.com/index.html

It has great "search and replace across multiple files" functionality, I use it whenever I need to change something en masse in large websites (unless I can be bothered to knock up a perl script to do it instead).

One of the things I've always wanted is some way to do a simple search and replace with strings and something that can do this with a bunch of files in the same directory.

Provided that the files are pure ASCII text, it's possible to do this from batch files with small command-line programs such as CHANGE.COM and FIX.EXE. But as was said, a simple search-and-replace-in-files can be done much easier with any of the advanced editors like Textpad and Ultraedit. Unless you need the search-and-replace feature to be automated, the GUI interface of those programs is much easier to use.