bat game. Adding a timer with set /p

Question

Im making a .bat game, and currently when putting in a command the code is

set /p command=

What i want to know is if you can somehow have

Answer 1

It is possible to mix a batch file with something else, for example c#. As .net is installed on almost all windows pc nowadays, that should not be a big problem.

In the example below there is a 3 second delay where the user can enter some input. If nothing is entered, the program continues, but %result% will be empty.

/* 2>NUL
@echo off 
REM cls
set WinDirNet=%WinDir%\Microsoft.NET\Framework
IF EXIST "%WinDirNet%\v2.0.50727\csc.exe" set csc="%WinDirNet%\v2.0.50727\csc.exe"
IF EXIST "%WinDirNet%\v3.5\csc.exe" set csc="%WinDirNet%\v3.5\csc.exe"
IF EXIST "%WinDirNet%\v4.0.30319\csc.exe" set csc="%WinDirNet%\v4.0.30319\csc.exe"
%csc% /nologo /out:"%~0.exe" %0



echo enter some text:

set result=
for /F "tokens=*" %%a in ('"%~0.exe"') do set result=%%a

echo you have entered:%result%




del "%~0.exe"
goto :eof
*/
using System;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading;

class Program
{
    static void Main (string[] args)
    {
        byte[] buffer=new byte[80];

        using (Stream s = Console.OpenStandardInput ()) {
            ManualResetEvent e=new ManualResetEvent(false);
            s.BeginRead (buffer, 0, buffer.Length, x => e.Set(), null);

            e.WaitOne (3000);
        }

        Console.WriteLine (Encoding.UTF8.GetString (buffer));
    }
}

This way you can program your batch file, and use c# for everything what is not possible in batch files. Note there are several improvements possible to this code.

See How to add a Timeout to Console.ReadLine()? for improvements of the c# code.

(Source of embedded c# code)