Beginner

Start here if you've never written a .bat file. By the end you'll be writing real scripts with arguments, conditionals, loops and subroutines, and you'll have built a script that sorts a messy folder into subfolders by file type.

Lessons

#	Lesson	You'll learn
1	Setup & your first script	Command Prompt, .bat vs .cmd, @echo off, running scripts
2	echo, comments & script structure	echo, echo., rem, ::, pause, cls, title
3	Variables & set	set, set /p, set /a, %var% expansion, quoting
4	Command-line arguments	%1–%9, %*, shift, %~dp0 and other modifiers
5	Conditionals with if	if/else, errorlevel, exist, defined, comparisons
6	Loops with for	plain for, /L, /D, /R, /F, %%i vs %i
7	Files & folders	copy, move, del, md, rd, ren, dir, xcopy/robocopy
8	Redirection & pipes	>, >>, 2>, 2>&1, <, |, nul
9	Subroutines with call & goto	labels, call :label, exit /b, returning values
10	Capstone: file organizer	put it all together in a real script

How to work through it

• One lesson per sitting. Type every example. Do the exercises.
• Run scripts from an open Command Prompt window so you can read errors.
• Don't move on until the "Recap" all makes sense.
• Stuck? Re-read "Common mistakes" — your bug is probably there.

When you're done

You should be able to explain every line of the capstone and add a feature to it unaided. Then go to Intermediate.