BAT file: Open new cmd window and execute a command in there

Question

I\'m trying to open a new command window in a BAT file:

start %windir%\\system32\\cmd.exe

After it opens, I\'d like to execute a BAT comman

Answer 1

This is not very easy.

The best approach is to have the part of your script that you want to be executed in a "new window" to be in a separate .bat file. This might be impractical if e.g. you need a lot of state from the rest of your script (variables, etc). One option is to pass any values you need (e.g. dir to operate in) to the batch file:

start cmd.exe stuff.bat %this_dir%

If you have a large amount of state to transmit you might consider generating a batch file at runtime:

set foo=Hello, World
set list_me=%userprofile%

set tmpdir=c:\windows\temp
set tmp=%tmpdir%\tmp.foo

del /q /f "%tmp%"

echo.echo %foo%>>"%tmp%"
echo.dir "%list_me%">>>"%tmp"

start cmd.exe "%tmp%"

del /q /f "%tmp%"

Obviously this is a trivial example.