BATCH ENHANCER (or BE) (or BE.EXE,) is an applet or free-standing utility packaged with Norton Utilities (NU) to graphically enhance the presentation of batch files. Batch Enhancer allows the use of colours, square graphics, delays, beeps, more complex decision parameters, easier to create user-choice menus and other functions.
BE is unusual in Norton's suite of utilities in that it was not designed to primarily be launched by NU itself, but be used like another (DOS) command/function to simplify the writing of executable batch files, or make them more powerful, such as for creating colourful and animated DOS screens that were typically plain blue & cyan.
Examples of usage syntaxes:
BE command (parameters) or BE filespec Commands available: ASK BEEP BOX CLS DELAY PRINTCHAR ROWCOL SA WINDOW For more help on a specific command type: BE command ? BE BEEP [switches] or BE BEEP [filespec] Switches /Dn Duration of the tone in n/18 seconds /FnSound a tone of frequency n /Rn Repeat the tone n times /Wn Wait between tones n/18 seconds PLAY A LITTLE TUNE. be beep /F392 /D4; be beep /F392 /D1; be beep /F523 /D15; BE BOX Usage: BE BOX top left bottom right [color] BE window 0,0,24,79 bright yellow on blue explode BE window 4,11,20,68 bright yellow on green explode shadow Usage: BE DELAY ticks (1 tick = 1/18 second)
If the line "BE DELAY 18" was run from inside a batch file, it would pause for one second before moving to the next instruction. At modern computer speeds many batch files run too fast to be followed by a user; inserting a delay ensures that the user would see the DOS window that executes the .BAT file.
GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA. Functionally identical to BASICA, its BASIC interpreter is a fully self-contained executable and does not need the Cassette BASIC ROM found in the original IBM PC. It was bundled with MS-DOS operating systems on IBM PC compatibles by Microsoft.
A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be scripting languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text. A script which sets up the environment, runs the program, and does any necessary cleanup or logging, is called a wrapper.
VBScript is a deprecated Active Scripting language developed by Microsoft that is modeled on Visual Basic. It allows Microsoft Windows system administrators to generate powerful tools for managing computers without error handling and with subroutines and other advanced programming constructs. It can give the user complete control over many aspects of their computing environment.
COMMAND.COM is the default command-line interpreter for MS-DOS, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me. In the case of DOS, it is the default user interface as well. It has an additional role as the usual first program run after boot, hence being responsible for setting up the system by running the AUTOEXEC.BAT configuration file, and being the ancestor of all processes.
The cd
command, also known as chdir
, is a command-line shell command used to change the current working directory in various operating systems. It can be used in shell scripts and batch files.
In computing, at
is a command in Unix-like operating systems, Microsoft Windows, and ReactOS used to schedule commands to be executed once, at a particular time in the future.
4DOS is a command-line interpreter by JP Software, designed to replace the default command interpreter COMMAND.COM
in Microsoft DOS and Windows. It was written by Rex C. Conn and Tom Rawson and first released in 1989. Compared to the default, it has a large number of enhancements.
An environment variable is a user-definable value that can affect the way running processes will behave on a computer. Environment variables are part of the environment in which a process runs. For example, a running process can query the value of the TEMP environment variable to discover a suitable location to store temporary files, or the HOME or USERPROFILE variable to find the directory structure owned by the user running the process.
CONFIG.SYS is the primary configuration file for the DOS and OS/2 operating systems. It is a special ASCII text file that contains user-accessible setup or configuration directives evaluated by the operating system's DOS BIOS during boot. CONFIG.SYS was introduced with DOS 2.0.
DOSKEY is a command for DOS, IBM OS/2, Microsoft Windows, and ReactOS that adds command history, macro functionality, and improved editing features to the command-line interpreters COMMAND.COM
and cmd.exe
.
AUTOEXEC.BAT
is a system file that was originally on DOS-type operating systems. It is a plain-text batch file in the root directory of the boot device. The name of the file is an abbreviation of "automatic execution", which describes its function in automatically executing commands on system startup; the filename was coined in response to the 8.3 filename limitations of the FAT file system family.
Norton Utilities is a utility software suite designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain a computer. The latest version of the original series of Norton Utilities is Norton Utilities 16 for Windows XP/Vista/7/8 was released 26 October 2012.
Command Prompt, also known as cmd.exe or cmd, is the default command-line interpreter for the OS/2, eComStation, ArcaOS, Microsoft Windows, and ReactOS operating systems. On Windows CE .NET 4.2, Windows CE 5.0 and Windows Embedded CE 6.0 it is referred to as the Command Processor Shell. Its implementations differ between operating systems, but the behavior and basic set of commands are consistent. cmd.exe is the counterpart of COMMAND.COM in DOS and Windows 9x systems, and analogous to the Unix shells used on Unix-like systems. The initial version of cmd.exe for Windows NT was developed by Therese Stowell. Windows CE 2.11 was the first embedded Windows release to support a console and a Windows CE version of cmd.exe. The ReactOS implementation of cmd.exe is derived from FreeCOM, the FreeDOS command line interpreter.
A command shell is a command-line interface to interact with and manipulate a computer's operating system.
In computing, sleep is a command in Unix, Unix-like and other operating systems that suspends program execution for a specified time.
The line-oriented debugger DEBUG.EXE
is an external command in operating systems such as DOS, OS/2 and Windows.
A batch file is a script file in DOS, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows. It consists of a series of commands to be executed by the command-line interpreter, stored in a plain text file. A batch file may contain any command the interpreter accepts interactively and use constructs that enable conditional branching and looping within the batch file, such as IF
, FOR
, and GOTO
labels. The term "batch" is from batch processing, meaning "non-interactive execution", though a batch file might not process a batch of multiple data.
In computing, choice
is a command that allows for batch files to prompt the user to select one item from a set of single-character choices. It is available in a number of operating system command-line shells.
A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with a computer program by inputting lines of text called command-lines. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as a user-friendly alternative to punched cards.