JBI wrote:Or Cygwin if you want a full suite of *NIX-compatible scripting tools.
Which
finally became available in x64 earlier last year.
Yay.
But I'd definitely have to agree it's either that or powershell, It doesn't make
any sense (IMHO) to learn the bizarre behaviors of such a limited tool. It might superficially seem easier to just plunk some stuff in a *.bat, but once you start trying to figure out such byzantine semantics, you're wasting time you'll never get back. Use the right tool/evironment the first time (again, in my opinion) and whatever you learn will actually be useful in the future and probably won't take you as long either.
I'd vote for cygwin because what you'll learn will be useful in windows and beyond, as virtually everything has a similar *nix compatibility layer. For instance, OpenVMS is dying, but there is GNV (GNU's not VMS
) which provides something very similar to cygwin for that platform (and even though Dave Cutler is responsible for both NT and VMS and neither have a proper fork(), NT's various APIs map even better).
Of course, there are the three Ps (Python, Perl, PHP) but at that point, you're like, programming. Which is fine too, but everything in it's place (again, in my opinion).