>Hi there:
>What are the major concerns in development of a system with a large amount
>of batch file processing?
With modern computers, my major concerns are disk thrashing - not an
issue unless there is significant disk activity besides the batch
program, recursion limits, transient file names need to be unique if
multiple batch programs run simultaneously, and the completely
non-real time nature of DOS windows.
T.E.D. (tda...@gearbox.maem.umr.edu - e-mail must contain "T.E.D." or my .sig in the body)
To try and put in words the gist of the above, the reasons I would not
choose NT Shell Scripts for a large system:
1. Different behaviour in different OS versions
2. Inadequate (and often incorrect) documentation
3. Very limited language constructs (loops, conditional processing,
error handling, functions, etc)
4. No pseudo-compilation, no debugging facility
5. Quirky. There are innumerable instances where things don't work as
you would expect them to.
On the bright side, if you have compelling reasons to use NT Shell,
this NG is very active and extremely helpful. NT Shell continues to
remain a very useful skill. It is an excellent way to get a number of
smaller day-to-day activities accomplished efficiently.
If you are still in the technology deciding phase, I would suggest
looking beyond NT Shell Scripting. You have a slew of scripting
languages to choose from - Perl, Python, REXX, Ruby to name a few.
Good luck!
Warm regards,
Sharad Agarwal 'Musafir'