Timothy Hill

Purely a reference work, and a bit clunky (though this fits the 70's feel of command.com/cmd.exe programming, so that's OK). Like the cover.

Given the availability of PowerShell these days, the relevance of this book might have diminished, but it is a real eye-opener as to what can be achieved with the command shell for Windows NT family of operating systems.

I just wish I hadn't found it so late in the day.

The Windows commandline shell is inarguably weaker than the shells offerred in the various *nixes. But it is not completely toothless!

This book will teach you to use that shell to great benefit. CMD scripting is in many cases much faster than WSH, and doesn't require you to install an interpreter on every system where your script will run (as you'd need to with, say, PERL).

This is the *touchstone* book for those who wish to channel the power of CMD scripting on Windows.