Windows batch files: .bat vs .cmd?

Posted by Chris Noe on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Chris Noe
Published on 2008-09-29T14:39:07Z Indexed on 2010/04/03 20:33 UTC
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Filed under:

Windows

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batch

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bat

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cmd

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ms-dos

As I understand it, .bat is the old 16-bit naming convention, and .cmd is for 32-bit Windows, i.e., starting with NT. But I continue to see .bat files everywhere, and they seem to work exactly the same using either suffix. Assuming that my code will never need to run on anyhting older than NT, does it really matter which way I name my batch files, or is there some gotcha awaiting me by using the wrong suffix?

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