text:
The Miraculous Icon of Panagia Portraitissa (The Keeper of the Portal)/
My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
Apolytikion (Dismissal) Hymn of Panagia Portaitissa. First Tone
Your sacred icon O Lady Portaitissa, which has come by the sea, is wondrous in your flock, we honor as a pure blessing, and faithfully as a repository of your glory, from it you pour forth gifts, to those who cry out fervently. Glory to your wonders O Pure One, Glory to your providence, Glory to your rich goodness towards us.
One of the countless holy Icons of the Ever-Virgin Mary and Mother of God is the holy Icon of Panagia Portaitissa. This holy Icon is one of the most treasured holy Icons of Mount Athos and throughout the world. In fact, Panagia still works many miracles through the copies of her holy Icon.
The Iberian (Monastery of Iveron of Mt. Athos) holy Icon of the Most-Holy Virgin, which is especially honored and venerated above all of the Icons of Mt. Athos, first appeared about the middle of the 9th century. The Holy Orthodox Church at that time was profoundly agitated by fresh waves of iconoclasm under Emperor Theophilus; and to protect the Holy Icons from being burnt and desecrated, pious Orthodox Christians tried to hide or set them afloat on swift rivers or seas, entrusting their destiny to the will of God. Such was the case of the Iberian Holy Icon of the Mother of God. According to Church Holy Tradition, to save the holy Icon from the iconoclasts, a certain pious widow who lived not far from the town of Nicea, floated the holy Icon on the water of the sea, committing it to the case of the Theotokos. But as the widow and her son, who helped her to set the holy Icon afloat, watched, the Holy Icon did not disappear into the water, but floated westward in an upright position. This moved the widow's son to dedicate himself to God and secretly he set out for Thessaloniki and from there to Mt. Athos, where he settled after taking monastic vows at the Iberian monastery (Iveron), it was he who told the monks there about the holy Icon and thus preserved its sacred memory.
One day in the latter half of the 10th Century, the Monks of Iveron Monastery saw a pillar of fire rising from the sea. It continued for several days and nights. Soon the Monks who gathered on the shore saw an icon of the Virgin which seemed to be standing upright on the surface of the water, giving off rays of light. The mystery of the miraculous appearance of the holy Icon was revealed by the Holy Mother of God Herself to Gabriel, a hermit of the Monastery Iveron, whom she willed to walk over the water and receive the holy Icon in his hands. With great rejoicing and ceremony the Monks greeted the Holy Icon on the shore and a Chapel was built on the spot soon after. The Holy Icon, placed by the Monks on the Holy Altar Table of the Monastery church, was soon found to have changed its place and to stand above the gates of the Monastery. And every time the Monks returned the holy Icon to the place they had chosen, it miraculously moved back to the gates of the Monastery. Finally it was revealed to the Monks by the Theotokos through the hermit Gabriel that this was a visual sign that she herself wished to be their Gatekeeper and Guardian not only in their present life, but also in the hereafter. Thus, at this special Sign, the Monks built a special Chapel for the holy Icon by the inner gates of the Monastery, where they worshipped zealously every day. The holy Icon was called Iberian (or Of Iveron) after the Monastery, and Portaitissa (or Gatekeeper), after its place by the gates.
One day, a blow dealt by a bandit left a mark on the cheek of the Holy Virgin Mary. The sight of the blood that ran down the cheek terrified the robber. He repented of his actions and dedicated the rest of his life to God and to the life of a holy ascetic. Since then all copies of the Iberian holy Icon of the Theotokos have depicted Her with a scar and drops of blood on Her cheek.
The fame of the holy Icon reached Russia through pious pilgrims. It became especially venerated in Orthodox Russia in the 17th Century when two early copies of it were brought from Mt. Athos (Holy Mountain) one in 1648 and the other in 1656 both being made at the order of Patriarch Nikon. One copy was placed in the Tsar's palace and later in a special Chapel built for it by the Resurrection Gates of Moscow.
In the Church Calendar, the Iberian holy Icon is commemorated on three occasions: October 13, the day when the holy Icon was brought from Mt. Athos to Moscow, in 1648; February 12, when the main feast of the Holy Icon was established; and of Bright Tuesday, according to the Athonite tradition. The many prayers that are offered up to the Iberian holy Icon of the Ever-Virgin Mary and the services in its honor testify to the great love and veneration in which it is held among all the holy Icons of the Theotokos which are the spiritual beauty of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The holy Icon was glorified with numerous miracles attributed to it by the faithful. The holy Icon of Iveron became known as the Myrrh-streaming Icon. For fifteen years, between 1982 and 1997, myrrh continually flowed from this holy Icon. Father Jose Monoz-Cortes devoted himself to the care and protection of the holy Icon, and accompanied it on numerous trips to parishes all over the United States and Canada, South America, Australia, and Europe.
Other Miraculous Holy Icons of the Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary
Miracles--certainly we believe in them, for they are so much part of our Orthodox Christian Tradition and heritage. The Holy Gospels are filled with accounts of them. Yet who among us would ever expect to witness something "miraculous" happening right before our eyes and yet this exactly what we have witnessed in our parish of Saint Andrew the last few years. As strongly as we claim to believe in the miracles of the past, just as strongly would we doubt (as many do) their occurrences today in the 21st century. They just don't happen now...not in South Bend, Indiana.
The Orthodox Christian faithful of Saint Nicholas Albanian Church in Chicago all must have had a similar attitude prior to December 6, 1986. But something happened that morning that not only changed their feelings, but changed their lives as well. Something happened that has had a profound effect on the millions of people who have since shared in the spiritual experience that began to unfold that day. It was then that the now-famous Icon of the Theotokos began to weep.
On December 6, 1986, the Very Reverend Archimandrite Philip Koufos arrived at his church with a good feeling in his heart. His three-year pastorate at the 250-family parish of Saint Nicholas on Chicago's Northwest side was beginning to bear fruit. He was pleased with the noticeable spiritual renewal and rebirth his faithful was undergoing. The church had been quite full the night before for the service of Vespers (evening service) on the eve of the Holy Day of Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker. He anticipated the same response on the day of the holy Feast, as the parish celebrated its patronal feast.
Parishioners, Lillian Geroge and Bessie Tolbert, two dedicated parishioners had also arrived at the church well in advance of the start of services to make some last-minute preparations. As Father Philip lit the candles burning in the lamps before the holy icons on the ornate holy Icon of screen, he reflected upon the sermon he had preached the previous evening. In his sermon, Father Philip extolled the many virtues of Saint Nicholas, concentrating on his role as a worker of miracles and as a healer. He spoke about the great responsibility of today's clergy to be "healers" as well.
Father's thoughts were interrupted, however, as he began to light the candle burning before the holy icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What were these wet streaks on the holy icon? Puzzled, he was about to call out to Lillian and Bessie, thinking that someone had perhaps inadvertently splashed something on this holy image of the Mother of God, when he glanced up and gazed into the eyes of the Theotokos depicted before him. In an instant, he knew that the moisture on the holy Icon was not caused by any cleaning mishap. Tears were actually welling in the eyes of the Virgin.
After staring at this sight in speechless wonder for a few minutes. Father Philip was able to compose himself and get the attention of the two women, who were in the back of the church. They hurriedly approached the sanctuary, where they, too, stood totally awestruck before the sacred image of the Mother of God. If this were not enough for the astonished trio to comprehend, moisture began to spout from the fingers of the Virgin, causing Father Philip to fall prostrate before the Holy Icon.
The Weeping Icon
The Weeping holy Icon of the Theotokos at Saint Nicholas Albanian Orthodox Church was painted almost half-century ago by the renowned Byzantine iconographer Constantine Youssis. In Orthodox iconography, there are many types and styles of holy icons of the Mother of God. The icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary that has gained so much attention is the icon known as the Hodigitria in Greek, or, in English, the Directress. The Mother of God in this style of icon is depicted as 'the one who points the way."
According to an ancient Orthodox Tradition of the Church, this style of holy Icon of the Blessed Mother is traced back to an original painting of her done by the Holy Evangelist Luke. It is said that the Theotokos herself gave her blessing to this portrait, saying, "My blessing will always remain with this icon." Saint Luke is said to have sent this holy Icon, along with the text of his Gospel, to Theophilus in Antioch. In the middle of the 5th century, this holy Icon was taken to the city of Constantinople by the Empress Evdoxia, as a gift to her mother-in-law Pulcheria. It was in the 9th century that the name "Hodigitria" began to be used in reference to this special painting.
In the reproduction of this holy Icon, the Christ Child always appears upright on His Mother's left arm. The Infant Christ is no longer shown as a baby, but rather as the Pre-Eternal God, full of wisdom. He holds a scroll in His left hand, and is shown giving a blessing with His right hand. The Mother of God is portrayed in a majestic manner. Her right hand is pointing to Her Son, in a grand gesture of presentation. It is as if she is proclaiming to mankind that her Child is the Son of God, the One we must follow and obey.
Since December 6, 1986, it has been estimated that more than 2 million people have visited Saint Nicholas church to see and venerate the weeping holy Icon of the Theotokos.
HONOLULU--You would never think a tiny parish in the heart of Kaka'ako would house such a secret. But, its existence is well-known to those in the Russian Orthodox faith.
An image of the Virgin Mary produces myrrh. There is no explanation for it. Yet, for those who believe--it's a miracle. "It's made us, perhaps, more humble towards God and the Church", said parishioner Coco Wiel. "We've started to realize we have much bigger responsibility to take care of the parish."
It's an icon of the Mother of God and Christ Child that, for reasons unexplainable, produces myrrh. Small drops that smell like roses. Hawaii's icon began streaming the oil-substance five years ago, on the 15th anniversary of the death of its original keeper, Brother Jose Munoz, who had wanted to visit the church in Honolulu named after the holy Icon, but never made it to the islands. "He asked Holy Mother Virgin Mary to bless our community just the same. So that's what we think" said Father Lyovin. For those who believe, the holy myrrh attributed with a cure of a girl diagnosed with a brain tumor.
Please note: One can go on for a very long time listing the different holy Icons of the Ever-Virgin Mary and Theotokos and all the wonderful countless miracles of our Panagia. It is, however, important for all Orthodox Christian believers to always seek the holy intercessions of the Mother of God and to turn to Her for aid, healing, comfort and salvation.
"One of the distinctive features of Orthodoxy is the place which it assigns to icons. An Orthodox church today is filled with them: dividing the sanctuary from the body of the building there is a solid screen, the iconostasis, entirely covered with icons, while other icons are placed in special shrines around the church; and perhaps the walls are covered with icons in fresco or mosaic. An Orthodox prostrates himself before these icons, he kisses them and burns candles in front of them; they are censed by the priest and carried in procession. What do these gestures and actions mean? What do icons signify, and why did St. John of Damascus and others regard them as important?
...When an Orthodox kisses an icon or prostrates himself before it, he is not guilty of idolatry. The icon is not an idol but a symbol; the veneration shown to images is directed, not towards stone, wood and paint, but towards the person depicted. This had been pointed out sometime before the Iconoclast controversy by Leontius of Neapolis.
Icons, said Leontius, are "opened books to remind us of God", they are one of the means which the Church employs in order to teach the faith. He who lacks learning or leisure to study works of theology has only to enter a church to see unfolded before him on the walls all the mysteries of the Christina religion. If a pagan asks you to show him your faith, said the Iconodules, take him into the church and place him before the icons. In this way icons form a part of Holy Tradition.
THE DOCTRINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF ICONS: Here we come to the real heart of the Iconoclast dispute. Granted that icons are not idols; granted that they are useful for instruction; but are they not only permissible but necessary? Is it essential to have icons? The Iconodules held that it is, because icons safeguard a full and proper doctrine of the Incarnation. The Iconodules (friends of icons) continued, the Incarnation has made a representational religious art possible: God can be depicted because He became human and took flesh. Material images, argued St. John of Damascus, can be made of Him Who took a material body." (Source: The Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware)
This is why it is important that we complete the iconography in our parish.
The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God and Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy sinner of God
+Father George


text:
What Will You Say?
I am always anxious to hear what's new, what's different and who is driving innovation in our field. Recently I attended what I anticipated would be a very special networking breakfast. It was a local provider group, smaller than usual with about 20 people, a great atmosphere for learning about my senior industry colleagues, their products, and their services.
I was looking forward to my first visit to this gathering. The elegant breakfast meeting was held in a prestigious retirement community that had, after 50 years in business, completely changed their culture, their marketing focus and much of their leadership staff in a very energetic attempt to attract the new generation of elderly ready to retire in the new age.
Some of the best retirement and assisted living buildings were represented that morning. I would listen closely to what they had to say about their organizations and their business. So as we finished our meal I looked forward to hearing each person. Everyone would have a small amount of time to say something about who they were, what they did or how they did it.
As we went around the room, each person taking their turn, the first person said her name, her job title, how long she worked there and what her occupancy was. Another said her building was a bit old fashioned and that the food was being upgraded. The next person said she had census issues in Memory Care. The next said they were having an open house to show off their recent remodel. I waited and waited. On and on it went. I never heard anything new, anything different, or anything that distinguished anyone in the room from anyone else.
If you have one minute to talk about your business to a captive audience who may be in a position to promote your work, use your services, or spread the word about your product, what will you say? Call it your pitch, your elevator speech or your 30-second commercial. Whatever you call it, give it some hard thought and some preparation. And next time, say something that matters, sets you apart, or maybe even ask for the business. Your moment is too valuable to waste.
If you'd like more information on how to make your elevator speech count, contact us.
Comments are closed.
Nancy Werner
My insights for your success.
June 2018

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Episode 7 - Mt Barff
The nitty gritty...
A right bloody slog up the West Matukituki Valley in the Aspiring National Park, to ski Mt Barff.
New Zealand Ski Touring access. Blood, sweat and tears. Well in this case, thankfully no blood, maybe a few tears but certainly a fuck load of sweat.
We set out from Raspberry Creek on the Wednesday for a casual 15km trot to the bottom of the Liverpool track, followed by a 500m rooty scramble to the Liverpool Hut. However, barely a hair's breadth from the carpark, the almighty weather gods thought bugger that and unleashed, what felt like gale force winds and a torrent of watery hell. Unfortunately no footage of this torrid termoil exists, as I was having way too shit of a time and my bin bag camera cover would have likely done a rather pathetic job.
Anyway, I digress. Upon reaching the Aspiring Hut, soaked to the bone and positively gagging for a spot of tea. The 3 males of our group (including yours truly) sniffiled that we were just simply too wet and elected to light the fire, dry the garb and hop into our sleeping bags. Worth noting here, that it was the lone female (Bella - who's clearly made of sterner stuff) that was dead set on carrying on into the rain.
Day 2 dawned with a perky 3am wake up and due to our previous pathetic male whimpering, we had quite a ball buster of a day on our hands. 5km and 3 awkward swing bridge crossings later we were at the bottom of the Liverpool track. Here an hour or so of rooty fun prevailed to get above the tree line and on to the snow line.
A wrong turn up the wrong access couloir saw us gain a fair bit of height, before losing it all again to get back on course. Probably wasted about 2 hours here, bollocks.
At this point Bella decided to save her legs for the ascent up to French Ridge later in the day and went for a chill at the Liverpool Hut.
Us lads continued crampon'ing up that particularly heinous type of breakable crust. Too firm and slippy for your skis to break through and grip too, but breakable enough for you to crunch through with every step when on crampons.
200 vertical meters from the top the crust seemed to worsen considerably and we decided to cut our losses and ski from there.
The hard crust actually ended up skiing a hell of a lot better than we imagined. Initially scratchy, but the sun had softened the middle and lower slopes to a semi corn consistency, that was ripe for mini slashin' n carving'.
A stumble back down the liverpool track and it was time to part ways. Manu, Gerry and Bella were off up to the French Ridge Hut (1000m of rooty fun) and I had my 15km walk back to Raspberry Creek.
Pretty knackered by this point, the solo slog back to the car was, ahem, a delight. A riveting audiobook kept spirits high however and I was soon back in Wanaka for a mountain of food and a comfy bed.


text:
Windows Batch Scripting
This book describes the Microsoft-supplied command interpreter on Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and later, which is cmd.exe.
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Using the Windows command interpreter
- 2.1 How a command line is interpreted
- 2.2 How a command is executed
- 2.3 Batch reloading
- 2.4 Environment variables
- 2.5 String processing
- 2.6 Command-line arguments
- 2.7 Percent tilde
- 2.8 Functions
- 2.9 Calculation
- 2.10 Limitations
- 3 Built-in commands
- 3.1 Overview
- 4 External commands
- 5 External links
This book addresses 32-bit Windows commands applicable to modern versions of Windows based on the Windows NT environment. It does not address commands that are specific to DOS environments and to DOS-based operating systems, such as Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me, whose Microsoft-supplied command interpreters are in fact DOS programs, not Win32 programs.
You can find out which version of cmd.exe you are running using the VER command.
This book first describes using the Windows NT command interpreter, how it receives, parses, and processes commands from users. Then it describes various commands available.
To find a list of all MS-DOS commands and a definition for all of them, open the command prompt on all Microsoft/Windows computers, and type help. To find out about a particular command, type the name of the command followed by "/?".
The subject of this book is also known as "batch programming", even though "batch" refers not only to batch files for MS DOS and Windows command interpreter. Other subject terms include "batch file programming", "batch file scripting", "Windows batch command", "Windows batch file", "Windows command line", "Windows command prompt", and "Windows shell scripting".
Using the Windows command interpreter[edit]
How a command line is interpreted[edit]
The parsing of a command line into a sequence of commands is complex, and varies subtly from command interpreter to command interpreter. There are, however, four main components:
- Variable substitution
- A command line is scanned for variable specifications, and any found are replaced with the contents of those variables.
- Quoting
- Special characters can be quoted, to remove their special meanings.
- Syntax
- Command lines are developed into a sequence of commands according to a syntax.
- Redirection
- Redirection specifications are applied, and removed from the command line, before an individual command in a sequence is executed.
Variable substitution[edit]
Command lines can contain variable specifications. These comprise a % character followed by a name. The name is ended by a second % character, except in special cases such as the batch file parameters %1, %2, and so forth.
Variable specifications are replaced with values. The value used to replace a variable specification is as follows:
- For variable specification names that match the names of environment variables, the replacement is the value of the named environment variable. For example: %PATH% is replaced by the value of the PATH environment variable.
- For variable specifications that name batch file parameters (i.e. that are non-negative decimal numbers), the replacement is the value of the parameter taken from the arguments with which the batch file was invoked (subject to any subsequent modifications by the SHIFT command). For example: %2 is replaced by the value of the second batch file parameter.
Special names[edit]
Some variable names are not visible using SET command. Rather, they are made available for reading using the % notation. To find out about them, type "help set".
Special variable names and what they expand to:
|Replacement Value Used
|The current directory, not ending in a slash character if it is not in the root directory of the current drive
|The system time in HH:MM:SS.mm format.
|The system date in a format specific to localization.
|A generated pseudo-random number between 0 and 32767.
|The error level returned by the last executed command, or by the last called batch script.
|The version number of the Command Processor Extensions currently used by cmd.exe.
|The content of the command line used when the current cmd.exe was started.
To prevent the metacharacters that control command syntax and redirection from having their special meanings, quoting is used. This takes two forms:
- Although they don't process quotation marks, in command arguments,
specially themselves, but simply pass them along as-is to the commands
executed, command interpreters do recognise when quotation marks
(") surround metacharacters. The & metacharacter does not have its
usual effect on command syntax if it is within a pair of quotation
- e.g. The command line echo "&" will invoke the ECHO command passing it the three characters "&" as its command tail, rather than split the command line in twain at the & character as would occur if the character were not within quotation marks.
- The "escape" character (always a ^ in Microsoft's CMD) used
in front of a metacharacter also prevents that metacharacter from
having its usual effect on command syntax. The "escape" character itself
is stripped from the command line before it is passed to the command
actually being invoked.
- e.g. The command line echo ^& will invoke the ECHO command passing it the character & as its command tail, rather than split the command line in twain at the & character as would otherwise occur.
Command lines are devolved into a sequence of commands according to a syntax. In that syntax, simple commands may be combined to form pipelines, which may in turn be combined to form compound commands, which finally may be turned into parenthesized commands.
A simple command is just a command name, a command tail, and some redirection specifications. An example of a simple command is dir *.txt > somefile.
A pipeline is several simple commands joined together with the "pipe" metacharacter—"|", also known as the "vertical bar". The standard output of the simple command preceding each vertical bar is connected to the standard input of the simple command following it, via a pipe. The command interpreter runs all of the simple commands in the pipeline in parallel. An example of a pipeline (comprising two simple commands) is dir *.txt | more.
A compound command is a set of pipelines separated by conjunctions. The pipelines are executed sequentially, one after the other, and the conjunction controls whether the command interpreter executes the next pipeline or not. An example of a compound command (comprising two pipelines, which themselves are just simple commands) is move file.txt file.bak && dir > file.txt.
The conjunctions are:
- &
- The simplest conjunction. The next pipeline is always executed after the current one has completed executing.
- &&
- A positive conditional conjunction. The next pipeline is executed if the current one completes executing with a zero exit status.
- ||
- A negative conditional conjunction. The next pipeline is executed if the current one completes executing with a non-zero exit status.
A parenthesized command is a compound command enclosed in parentheses (i.e. ( and )). From the point of view of syntax, this turns a compound command into a simple command, whose overall output can be redirected.
For example: The command line ( pushd temp & dir & popd ) > somefile causes the standard output of the entire compound command ( pushd temp & dir & popd ) to be redirected to somefile.
Redirection specifications are applied, and removed from the command line, before an individual command in a sequence is executed. Redirection specifications control where the standard input, standard output, and standard error file handles for a simple command point. They override any effects to those file handles that may have resulted from pipelining. (See the preceding section on command syntax.) Redirection signs > and >> can be prefixed with 1 for the standard output (same as no prefix) or 2 for the standard error.
The redirection specifications are:
- < filename
- Redirect standard input to read from the named file.
- > filename
- Redirect standard output to write to the named file, overwriting its previous contents.
- >> filename
- Redirect standard output to write to the named file, appending to the end of its previous contents.
- >&h
- Redirect to handle h, where handle is any of 0—standard input, 1—standard output, 2—standard error, and more.
- <&h
- Redirect from handle h.
- dir *.txt >listing.log
- Redirects the output of the dir command to listing.log file.
- dir *.txt 2>NUL
- Redirects errors of the dir command to nowhere.
- dir *.txt >listing.log 2>&1
- Redirects the output of the dir command to listing.log file, along with the error messages.
- dir *.txt >listing.log 2>listing-errors.log
How a command is executed[edit]
Batch reloading[edit]
The command interpreter reloads the content of a batch after each execution of a line or a bracketed group.
If you start the following batch and change "echo A" to "echo B" in the batch shortly after starting it, the output will be B.
@echo off ping -n 6 127.0.0.1 >nul & REM wait echo A
What is on a single line does matter; changing "echo A" in the following batch after running it has no impact:
@echo off ping -n 6 127.0.0.1 >nul & echo A
Nor have after-start changes have any impact on commands bracketed with ( and ). Thus, changing "echo A" after starting the following batch has no impact:
@echo off for /L %%i in (1,1,10) do ( echo A ping -n 2 127.0.0.1 >nul & REM wait )
Ditto for any other enclosing, including this one:
@echo off ( ping -n 6 127.0.0.1 >nul & REM wait echo A )
Environment variables[edit]
The environment variables of the command interpreter process are inherited by the processes of any (external) commands that it executes. A few environment variables are used by the command interpreter itself. Changing them changes its operation.
Environment variables are affected by the SET, PATH, and PROMPT commands.
To unset a variable, set it to empty string, such as "set myvar=".
The command interpreter inherits its initial set of environment variables from the process that created it. In the case of command interpreters invoked from desktop shortcuts this will be Windows Explorer, for example.
Command interpreters generally have textual user interfaces, not graphical ones, and so do not recognize the Windows message that informs applications that the environment variable template in the Registry has been changed. Changing the environment variables in Control Panel will cause Windows Explorer to update its own environment variables from the template in the Registry, and thus change the environment variables that any subsequently invoked command interpreters will inherit. However, it will not cause command interpreters that are already running to update their environment variables from the template in the Registry.
The COMSPEC environment variable contains the full pathname of the command interpreter program file. This is just inherited from the parent process, and is thus indirectly derived from the setting of COMSPEC in the environment variable template in the Registry.
The value of the PATH environment variable comprises a list of directory names, separated by semi-colon characters. This is the list of directories that are searched, in order, when locating the program file of an external command to execute.
The value of the PATHEXT environment variable comprises a list of filename extensions, separated by semi-colon characters. This is the list of filename extensions that are applied, in order, when locating the program file of an external command to execute.
An example content of PATHEXT printed by "echo %PATHEXT%":
By adding ".PL" to the variable, you can ensure Perl programs get run from the command line even when typed without the ".pl" extension. Thus, instead of typing "mydiff.pl a.txt b.txt", you can type "mydiff a.txt b.txt".
Adding ".PL" to the variable in Windows Vista and later:
- setx PATHEXT=%PATHEXT%;.PL
- If you use "set" available in Windows XP, the effect will be temporary and impacting only the current console or process.
- Windows Environment Variables at ss64
- Making Python scripts run on Windows without specifying ".py" extension at stackoverflow
The PROMPT environment variable controls the text emitted when the command interpreter displays the prompt. The command interpreter displays the prompt when prompting for a new command line in interactive mode, or when echoing a batch file line in batch file mode.
Various special character sequences in the value of the PROMPT environment variable cause various special effects when the prompt is displayed, as in the following table:
|Expansion Result
|$ character itself
|& symbol AKA ampersand. A convenience, since it is difficult to place a literal & in the value of the PROMPT environment variable using the SET command.
|Vertical bar '|' (pipe symbol)
|Left parenthesis '('
|Current date
|ESC (ASCII code 27)
|Right parenthesis ')'
|Greater-than symbol '>'
|Backspace (deletes previous character)
|Less-than symbol '<'
|Remote name linked to the current drive if it is a network drive; empty string otherwise.
|Current drive letter
|Current drive letter and full path
|'=' (equals sign)
|' ' (space character)
|Current system time
|Windows version number
|<CR> (carriage return character, aka "enter")
|As many plus signs (+) as there are items on the pushd directory stack
String processing[edit]
Getting a substring of a variable by position and length:
Before running the following examples, ensure that %a% equals "abcd" by running this:
- set a=abcd
The examples:
- echo %a:~0,1%
- Result: a
- echo %a:~1,1%
- Result: b
- echo %a:~0,2%
- Result: ab
- echo %a:~1,2%
- Result: bc
- echo %a:~1%
- Result: bcd
- echo %a:~-1%
- Result: d
- echo %a:~-2%
- Result: cd
- echo %a:~0,-2%
- Result: ab
- echo %a:~0,-1%
- Result: abc
- echo %a:~1,-1%
- Result: bc
Testing substring containment:
- if not "%a:bc=%"=="%a%" echo yes
- If variable a contains "bc" as a substring, echo "yes".
- This test is a trick that uses string replacement, discussed below.
- This test does not work if the variable contains a quotation mark.
Testing for "starts with":
- if %a:~0,1%==a echo yes
- If variable a starts with "a", echo "yes".
- if %a:~0,2%==ab echo yes
- If variable a starts with "ab", echo "yes".
String replacement:
- set a=abcd & echo %a:c=%
- Result: abd
- set a=abcd & echo %a:c=e%
- Result: abed
- set a=abcd & echo %a:*c=%
- Result: d
- The asterisk only works at the beginning of the sought pattern; it does not work at the end or in the middle.
See also the help for SET command: set /?.
Splitting a string by any of " ", ",", and ";":
- set myvar=a b,c;d
- for %%a in (%myvar%) do echo %%a
Splitting a string by semicolon, assuming the string contains no quotation marks:
@echo off set myvar=a b;c;d set strippedvar=%myvar% :repeat for /f "delims=;" %%a in ("%strippedvar%") do echo %%a set prestrippedvar=%strippedvar% set strippedvar=%strippedvar:*;=% if not "%prestrippedvar:;=%"=="%prestrippedvar%" goto :repeat
Command-line arguments[edit]
The command-line arguments AKA command-line parameters passed to a batch script are accessible as %1, %2, ..., %9. There can be more than nine arguments; to access them, see how to loop over all of them below.
The syntax %0 does not refer to a command-line parameter but rather to the name of the batch file.
Testing for whether the first command-line argument has been provided:
- if not -%1-==-- echo Argument one provided
- if -%1-==-- echo Argument one not provided& exit /b
Looping over all command-line arguments (for each command-line argument, ...):
- for %%i in (%*) do (
- echo %%i
- )
Finding the number of command-line arguments:
- set argnumber=0
- for %%i in (%*) do set /a argnumber+=1
See also SHIFT.
The maximum possible number of arguments is greater than 4000, as empirically determined on a Windows Vista machine. The number can differ on Windows XP and Windows 7.
When passing arguments to a batch script, characters used for argument separation include a space, comma, and semicolon. Thus, the following lines pass the same four arguments:
- test.bat a b c d
- test.bat a,b,c,d
- test.bat a, b, c, d
- test.bat a;b;c;d
- test.bat a b,c;,;d
Yes, even the line with "a b,c;,;d" passes four arguments.
To have a space, comma or semicolon in the argument value, you can pass the value enclosed in quotation marks. However, the quotation marks become part of the argument value. To get rid of the enclosing quotation marks when referring to the argument in the script, you can use %~<number> described in #Percent tilde.
Percent tilde[edit]
When a command-line argument contains a file name, special syntax can be used to get various information about the file.
The following syntaxes expand to various information about the file passed as %1:
|Expansion Result
|%1 with no enclosing quotation marks
|Not provided
|Full path with a drive letter
|Drive letter
|Drive-less path with the trailing backslash
|For a file, the file name without extension
For a folder, the folder name
|File name extension including the period
|Modify of f, n and x to use short name
|Not provided
|File attributes
|Date and time of last modification of the file
|02.11.2006 11:45
|File size
|A combination of p and n
|A combination of several letters
|The full path of the first match found in the folders present in the PATH variable, or an empty string in no match.
| %~n applied to %0:
The extensionless name of the batch
| %~nx applied to %0:
The name of the batch
| %~f applied to %0:
The drive letter of the batch
| %~dp applied to %0:
The folder of the batch with trailing backslash
|C:\Users\Joe Hoe\
The same syntax applies to single-letter variables created by FOR command, such as "%%i".
To learn about this subject from the command line, type "call /?" or "for /?".
Functions AKA subprograms can be emulated using CALL, labels, SETLOCAL and ENDLOCAL.
An example of a function that determines arithmetic power:
@echo off call :power 2 4 echo %result% rem Prints 16, determined as 2 * 2 * 2 * 2 goto :eof rem __Function power______________________ rem Arguments: %1 and %2 :power setlocal set counter=%2 set interim_product=%1 :power_loop if %counter% gtr 1 ( set /A interim_product = %interim_product% * %1 set /A counter = %counter% - 1 goto :power_loop ) endlocal & set result=%interim_product% goto :eof
While the "goto :eof" at the end of the function is not really needed, it has to be there in the general case in which there is more than one function.
The variable into which the result should be stored can be specified on the calling line as follows:
@echo off call :sayhello result=world echo %result% exit /b :sayhello set %1=Hello %2 REM Set %1 to set the returning value exit /b
In the above example, exit /b is used instead of goto :eof to the same effect.
Batch scripts can do simple integer arithmetic and bitwise manipulation using SET /a command. The arithmetic is a 32-bit one. The largest supported integer is 2147483647 = 2 ^ 31 - 1. The smallest supported integer obtained by usual means is -2147483647, more of which later. The syntax is reminiscent of the C language.
Arithmetic operators include *, /, % (modulo), +, -. In a batch, modulo has to be entered as "%%".
Bitwise operators interpret the number as a sequence of 32 binary digits. These are ~ (complement), & (and), | (or), ^ (xor), << (left shift), >> (right shift).
A logical operator of negation is !: it turns zero into one and non-zero into zero.
A combination operator is ,: it allows more calculations in one set command.
Combined assignment operators are modeled on "+=", which, in "a+=b", means "a=a+b". Thus, "a-=b" means "a=a-b". Similarly for *=, /=, %=, &=, ^=, |=, <<=, and >>=.
The precedence order of supported operators, each predecence level separated by ●, is as follows: ( ) ● * / % + - ● << >> ● & ● ^ ● | ● = *= /= %= += -= &= ^= |= <<= >>= ● ,
As some of the operators have special meaning for the command interpreter, an expression using them needs to be enclosed in quotation marks, such as this:
- set /a num="255^127"
- set /a "num=255^127"
- Alternative placement of quotation marks.
The smallest supporter integer is -2147483647, but you can get -2147483648 like this:
- set /a num=~2147483647
- set n1=40 & set n2=25
set /a n3=%n1%+%n2%
- Uses the standard perecent notation for variable expansion.
- set n1=40 & set n2=25
set /a n3=n1+n2
- Avoids the percent notation around variable names as unneeded for /a.
- set /a num="255^127"
- Encloses "^" in quotation marks to prevent its special meaning for the command interpreter.
- set /a n1 = (10 + 5)/5
- The spaces around = do not matter with /a. However, getting used to it lends itself to writing "set var = value" without /a, which sets the value of "var " rather than "var".
- set /a n1=2+3,n2=4*7
- Performs two calculations.
- set /a n1=n2=2
- Has the same effect as n1=2,n2=2.
- set n1=40 & set n2=25 & set /a n3=n1+n2
- Works as expected.
- set /a n1=2,n2=3,n3=n1+n2
- Works as expected.
- set n1=40 & set n2=25 & set /a n3=%n1%+%n2%
- Does not work unless n1 and n2 were set previously. The variable specifications "%n1%" and "%n2"% get expanded before the first set command is executed. Dropping percent notation makes it work.
- set /a n1=2,n2=3,n3=%n1%+%n2%
- Does not work unless n1 and n2 were set previously, for the reason stated in the previous example.
An example calculation that prints prime numbers:
@echo off setlocal set n=1 :print_primes_loop set /a n=n+1 set cand_divisor=1 :print_primes_loop2 set /a cand_divisor=cand_divisor+1 set /a cand_divisor_squared=cand_divisor*cand_divisor if %cand_divisor_squared% gtr %n% echo Prime %n% & goto :print_primes_loop set /a modulo=n%%cand_divisor if %modulo% equ 0 goto :print_primes_loop & REM Not a prime goto :print_primes_loop2
There is no touch command familiar from other operating systems. The touch command would modify the last-modification timestamp of a file without changing its content.
One workaround, with unclear reliability and applicability across various Windows versions, is this:
- copy /b file.txt+,,
- Windows recursive touch command at superuser.com
- Windows version of the Unix touch command at stackoverflow.com
Built-in commands[edit]
These commands are all built in to the command interpreter itself, and cannot be changed. Sometimes this is because they require access to internal command interpreter data structures, or modify properties of the command interpreter process itself.
|Associates an extension with a file type (FTYPE).
|Sets or clears extended CTRL+C checking.
|Calls one batch program from another.
|Displays or sets the current directory.
|Displays or sets the active code page number.
|Clears the screen.
|Sets the default console foreground and background colors.
|Copies files.
|Displays and sets the system date.
|Deletes one or more files.
|Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory.
|Displays messages, or turns command echoing on or off.
|Ends localization of environment changes in a batch file.
|Quits the CMD.EXE program (command interpreter).
|Runs a specified command for each file in a set of files.
|Sets the file type command.
|Performs conditional processing in batch programs.
|Creates a directory.
|Moves a file to a new location
|Sets or modifies the PATH environment
|Causes the command session to pause for user input.
|Changes to the drive and directory poped from the directory stack
|Sets or modifies the string displayed when waiting for input.
|Pushes the current directory onto the stack, and changes to the new directory.
|Removes the directory.
|A comment command. Unlike double-colon (::), the command can be executed.
|Renames a file or directory
|Sets or displays shell environment variables
|Creates a child-environment for the batch file.
|Moves the batch parameters forward.
|Starts a program with various options.
|Displays or sets the system clock
|Changes the window title
|Prints the content of a file to the console.
|Shows the command processor, operating system versions.
|Verifies that file copy has been done correctly.
|Shows the label of the current volume.
Associates an extension with a file type (FTYPE), displays existing associations, or deletes an association. See also FTYPE.
- assoc
- Lists all associations, in the format "<file extension>=<file type>", as, for example, ".pl=Perl" or ".xls=Excel.Sheet.8".
- assoc | find ".doc"
- Lists all associations containing ".doc" substring.
- assoc at ss64.com
- assoc at Microsoft
- Making Python scripts run on Windows without specifying ".py" extension at stackoverflow
In Windows versions based on Windows NT, does nothing; kept for compatibility with MS DOS.
Calls one batch program from another, or calls a subprogram within a single batch program. For calling a subprogram, see Functions section.
Changes to a different directory, or displays the current directory. However, if a different drive letter is used, it does not switch to that different drive or volume.
- cd
- cd C:\Program Files
- cd \Program Files
- cd Documents
- cd %USERPROFILE%
- cd /d C:\Program Files
- Changes to the directory of the C: drive even if C: is not the current drive.
- C: & cd C:\Program Files.
- Changes to the directory of the C: drive even if C: is not the current drive.
- cd ..
- Changes to the parent directory. Does nothing if already in the root directory.
- cd ..\..
- Changes to the parent directory two levels up.
- C: & cd C:\Windows\System32 & cd ..\..\Program Files
- Uses ".." to navigate through the directory three up and down
No surrounding quotes are needed around paths with spaces.
A synonym of CD.
Clears the screen.
Copies files. See also MOVE.
- copy F:\File.txt
- Copies the file into the current directory, assuming the current directory is not F:\.
- copy "F:\My File.txt"
- As above; quotation marks are needed to surround a file with spaces.
- copy F:\*.txt
- Copies the files located at F:\ and ending in dot txt into the current directory, assuming the current directory is not F:\.
- copy F:\*.txt .
- Does the same as the above command.
- copy File.txt
- Issues an error message, as File.txt cannot be copied over itself.
- copy File1.txt File2.txt
- Copies File1.txt to File2.txt, overwriting File2.txt if confirmed by the user or if run from a batch script.
- copy File.txt "My Directory"
- Copies File.txt into "My Directory" directory, assuming "My Directory" exists.
- copy Dir1 Dir2
- Copies all files directly located in directory Dir1 into Dir2, assuming Dir1 and Dir2 are directories. Does not copy files located in nested directories of Dir1.
- copy *.txt *.bak
- For each *.txt file in the current folder, makes a copy ending with "bak" rather than "txt".
Deletes files. Use with caution, especially in combination with wildcards. Only deletes files, not directories, for which see RD. For more, type "del /?".
- del File.txt
- del /s *.txt
- Deletes the files recursively including nested directories, but keeps the directories; mercilessly deletes all matching files without asking for confirmation.
- del /p /s *.txt
- As above, but asks for confirmation before every single file.
Lists the contents of a directory. Offers a range of options. Type "dir /?" for more help.
- dir
- Lists the files and folders in the current folder, excluding hidden files and system files; uses a different manner of listing if DIRCMD variable is non-empty and contains switches for dir.
- dir D:
- dir /b C:\Users
- dir /s
- Lists the contents of the directory and all subdirectories recursively.
- dir /s /b
- Lists the contents of the directory and all subdirectories recursively, one file per line, displaying complete path for each listed file or directory.
- dir *.txt
- Lists all files with .txt extension.
- dir /a
- Includes hidden files and system files in the listing.
- dir /ah
- Lists hidden files only.
- dir /ad
- Lists directories only. Other letters after /A include S, I, R, A and L.
- dir /ahd
- Lists hidden directories only.
- dir /a-d
- Lists files only, omitting directories.
- dir /a-d-h
- Lists non-hidden files only, omitting directories.
- dir /od
- Orders the files and folders by the date of last modification. Other letters after /O include N (by name), E (by extension), S (by size), and G (folders first)
- dir /o-s
- Orders the files by the size descending; the impact on folder order is unclear.
- dir /-c /o-s /a-d
- Lists files ordered by size descending, omitting the thousands separator via /-C, excluding folders.
Displays or sets the date. The way the date is displayed depends on country settings. Date can also be displayed using "echo %DATE%".
Getting date in the iso format, like "2000-01-28": That is nowhere easy, as the date format depends on country settings.
- If you can assume the format of "Mon 01/28/2000", the following will do:
- set isodate=%date:~10,4%-%date:~4,2%-%date:~7,2%
- date at ss64.com
- date at Microsoft
- How to get current datetime on Windows command line, in a suitable format for using in a filename? at stackoverflow
Displays messages, or turns command echoing on or off.
- echo on
- @echo off
- echo Hello
- echo "hello"
- Displays the quotes too.
- echo %PATH%
- Displays the contents of PATH variable.
- echo ECHO Owner ^& son
- echo 1&echo 2&echo 3
- Displays three strings, each followed by a newline.
Displaying a string without a newline requires a trick:
- set <NUL /p=Output of a command:
- Displays "Output of a command:". The output of the next command will be displayed immediately after ":".
- set <NUL /p=Current time: & time /t
- Displays "Current time: " followed by the output of "time /t".
- (set <NUL /p=Current time: & time /t) >tmp.txt
- Like before, with redirecting the output of both commands to a file.
An example:
if exist file.txt ( echo The file exists. ) else ( echo The file does not exist. )
See also IF.
Ends local set of environment variables started using SETLOCAL. Can be used to create subprograms: see Functions.
A synonym of DEL.
Exits the DOS console or, with /b, only the currently running batch or the currently executed subroutine. If used without /b in a batch file, causes the DOS console calling the batch to close.
- exit
- exit /b
Iterates over a series of values, executing a command.
In the following examples, %i is to be used from the command line while %%i is to be used from a batch.
- for %i in (1,2,3) do echo %i
- From a command line, echo 1, 2, and 3.
- for %%i in (1,2,3) do echo %%i
- In a batch, echo 1, 2, and 3.
- for %i in (1 2,3;4) do echo %i
- Echo 1, 2, 3, and 4. Yes, a mixture of item separators is used.
- for /L %i in (1,1,10) do echo %i
- Echo the numbers from 1 to 10.
- for /f "tokens=*" %i in (list.txt) do echo %i
- For each line in a file, echo the line.
- for /f "tokens=1-3 delims=:" %a in ("First:Second:Third") do echo %c-%b-%a
- Parse a string into tokens delimited by ":". Note how the second and third tokens are stored in %b and %c even though %b and %c are not expressly mentioned in the part of the command before "do".
- for /f "tokens=*" %i in ('cd') do echo %i
- For each line of the result of a command, echo the line.
- for /f "tokens=*" %i in ('dir /b /a-d-h') do @echo %~nxai
- For each non-hidden file in the current folder, displays the file attributes followed by the file name. In the string "%~nxai", uses the syntax described at #Percent tilde.
Displays or sets the command to be executed for a file type. See also ASSOC.
- ftype
- Lists all associations of commands to be executed with file types, as, for example, 'Perl="C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe" "%1" %*'
- ftype | find "Excel.Sheet"
- Lists only associations whose display line contains "Excel.Sheet"
- ftype at ss64.com
- ftype at Microsoft
- Making Python scripts run on Windows without specifying ".py" extension at stackoverflow
Goes to a label.
An example:
goto :mylabel echo Hello 1 REM Hello 1 never gets printed. :mylabel echo Hello 2 goto :eof echo Hello 3 REM Hello 3 never gets printed. Eof is a virtual label standing for the end of file.
Conditionally executes a command.
Documentation is available by entering IF /? to CMD prompt.
What is not documented is that the IF command barfs when it encounters a string containing a '/' character. This can be very frustrating when you need to process a line with this fairly common character that should never be excluded. The problem no doubt comes from the IF command confusing the '/' as part of a /I (or /?) directive on the IF command line.
Available elementary tests:
- exist <filename>
- <string>==<string>
- <expression1> equ <expression2> -- equals
- <expression1> neq <expression2> -- not equal
- <expression1> lss <expression2> -- less than
- <expression1> leq <expression2> -- less than or equal
- <expression1> gtr <expression2> -- greater then
- <expression1> geq <expression2> -- greater than or equal
- defined <variable>
- errorlevel <number>
- cmdextversion <number>
To each elementary test, "not" can be applied.
The /I switch makes the == and equ comparisons ignore case.
An example:
if not exist %targetpath% ( echo Target path not found. exit /b )
- if not 1 equ 0 echo Not equal
- if 1 equ 0 echo A & echo B
- Does nothing; both echo commands are subject to the condition.
- if not 1 equ 0 goto :mylabel
Creates a new directory or directories. Has a synonym MKDIR; see also its antonym RD.
- md Dir
- Creates one directory in the current directory.
- md Dir1 Dir2
- Creates two directories in the current directory.
- md "My Dir With Spaces"
- Creates a directory with a name containing spaces in the current directory.
A synonym for MD.
Moves files or directories between directories, or renames them. See also REN.
- move File1.txt File2.txt
- Renames File1.txt to File2.txt, overwriting File2.txt if confirmed by the user or if run from a batch script.
- move File.txt Dir
- Moves File.txt file into Dir directory, assuming File.txt is a file and Dir is a directory; overwrites target file Dir\a.txt if conditions for overwriting are met.
- move Dir1 Dir2
- Renames directory Dir1 to Dir2, assuming Dir1 is a directory and Dir2 does not exist.
- move Dir1 Dir2
- Moves directory Dir1 into Dir2, resulting in existence of Dir2\Dir1, assuming both Dir1 and Dir2 are existing directories.
- move F:\File.txt
- Moves the file to the current directory.
- move F:\*.txt
- Moves the files located at F:\ and ending in dot txt into the current directory, assuming the current directory is not F:\.
Displays or sets the value of the PATH environment variable.
Prompts the user and waits for a line of input to be entered.
Changes to the drive and directory poped from the directory stack. The directory stack is filled using the PUSHD command.
Can be used to change or reset the cmd.exe prompt. It sets the value of the PROMPT environment variable.
C:\>PROMPT MyPrompt$G MyPrompt>CD C:\ MyPrompt>PROMPT C:\>
The PROMPT command is used to set the prompt to "MyPrompt>". The CD shows that the current directory path is "C:\". Using PROMPT without any parameters sets the prompt back to the directory path.
Pushes the current directory onto the directory stack, making it available for the POPD command to retrieve, and, if executed with an argument, changes to the directory stated as the argument.
Removes directories. See also its synonym RMDIR and antonym MD. Per default, only empty directories can be removed. Also type "rd /?".
- rd Dir1
- rd Dir1 Dir2
- rd "My Dir With Spaces"
- rd /s Dir1
- Removes the directory Dir1 including all the files and subdirectories in it, asking for confirmation once before proceeding with the removal. To delete files recursively in nested directories with a confirmation per file, use DEL with /s switch.
- rd /q /s Dir1
- Like above, but without asking for confirmation.
Renames files and directories.
- ren filewithtpyo.txt filewithtypo.txt
- ren *.cxx *.cpp
- ren at ss64.com
- http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/rename.mspx?mfr=true rename at Microsoft]
This is a synonym of REN command.
Used for remarks in batch files, preventing the content of the remark from being executed.
An example:
REM A remark that does not get executed echo Hello REM This remark gets displayed by echo echo Hello & REM This remark gets ignored as wished :: This sentence has been marked as a remark using double colon.
REM is typically placed at the beginning of a line. If placed behind a command, it does not work, unless preceded by an ampersand, as shown in the example above.
An alternative to REM is double colon.
This is a synonym of RD.
Displays or sets environment variables. With /P switch, it asks the user for input, storing the result in the variable. With /A switch, it performs simple arithmetic calculations, storing the result in the variable. With string assignments, there must be no spaces before and after the equality sign; thus, "set name = Peter" does not work, while "set name=Peter" does.
- set
- Displays a list of environment variables
- set HOME
- Displays the values of the environment variables whose names start with "HOME"
- set MYNUMBER=56
- set HOME=%HOME%;C:\Program Files\My Bin Folder
- set /P user_input=Enter an integer:
- set /A result = 4 * ( 6 / 3 )
- Sets the result variable with the result of a calculation. See also #Calculation.
When used in a batch file, makes all further changes to environment variables local to the current batch file. When used outside of a batch file, does nothing. Can be ended using ENDLOCAL. Exiting a batch file automatically calls "end local". Can be used to create subprograms: see Functions.
Furthermore, can be used to enable delayed expansion like this: "setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion". Delayed expansion consists in the names of variables enclosed in exclamation marks being replaced with their values only after the execution reaches the location of their use rather than at an earlier point.
The following is an example of using delayed expansion in a script that prints the specified number of first lines of a file, providing some of the function of the command "head" known from other operating systems:
@echo off call :myhead 2 File.txt exit /b :: Function myhead :: =============== :: %1 - lines count, %2 - file name :myhead setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion set counter=1 for /f "tokens=*" %%i in (%2) do ( echo %%i set /a counter=!counter!+1 if !counter! gtr %1 exit /b ) exit /b
Shifts the batch file arguments along. Thus, if %1=Hello 1, %2=Hello 2, and %3=Hello 3, then, after SHIFT, %1=Hello 2, and %2=Hello 3.
Starts a program in new window, or opens a document. Uses an unclear algorithm to determine whether the first passed argument is a window title or a program to be executed; hypothesis: it uses the presence of quotes around the first argument as a hint that it is a window title.
- start notepad.exe & echo "Done."
- Starts notepad.exe, proceeding to the next command without waiting for finishing the started one. Keywords: asynchronous.
- start "notepad.exe"
- Launches a new console window with notepad.exe being its title, apparently an undesired outcome.
- start "" "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
- Starts Internet Explorer. The empty "" passed as the first argument is the window title of a console that actually does not get opened, or at least not visibly so.
- start "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe"
- Launches a new console window with "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" being its title, apparently an undesired outcome.
- start /wait notepad.exe & echo "Done."
- Starts notepad.exe, waiting for it to end before proceeding.
- start /low notepad.exe & echo "Done."
- As above, but starting the program with a low priority.
- start "" MyFile.xls
- Opens the document in the program assigned to open it.
- start
- Starts a new console (command-line window) in the same current folder.
- start .
- Opens the current folder in Windows Explorer.
- start ..
- Opens the parent folder in Windows Explorer.
- start "" "mailto:"
- Starts the application for writing a new email.
- start /b TODO:example-application-where-this-is-useful
- Starts the application without opening a new console window, redirecting the output to the console from which the start command was called.
Displays or sets the system time.
Prints the content of a file or files to the output.
- type filename.txt
- type a.txt b.txt
- type *.txt
- type NUL > tmp.txt
- Create an empty file (blank file).
Shows the command processor or operating system version.
C:\>VER Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] C:\>
Some version strings:
- Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
- Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6000]
- ...
The word "version" appears localized.
Sets or clears the setting to verify whether COPY files etc. are written correctly.
Displays volume labels.
External commands[edit]
External commands available to Windows command interpreted are separate executable program files, supplied with the operating system by Microsoft, or bundled as standard with the third-party command interpreters. By replacing the program files, the meanings and functions of these commands can be changed.
Many, but not all, external commands support the "/?" convention, causing them to write on-line usage information to their standard output and then to exit with a status code of 0.
Schedules a program to be run at a certain time. See also SCHTASKS.
Displays or sets file attributes. With no arguments, it displays the attributes of all files in the current directory. With no attribute modification instructions, it displays the attributes of the files and directories that match the given search wildcard specifications. Similar to chmod of other operating systems.
Modification instructions:
- To add an attribute, attach a '+' in front of its letter.
- To remove an attribute, attach a '-' in front of its letter
- Attributes:
- A - Archived
- H - Hidden
- S - System
- R - Read-only
- ...and possibly others.
- attrib
- Displays the attributes of all files in the current directory.
- attrib File.txt
- Displays the attributes of the file.
- attrib +r File.txt
- Adds the "Read-only" attribute to the file.
- attrib -a File.txt
- Removes the "Archived" attribute from the file.
- attrib -a +r File.txt
- Removes the "Archived" attribute and adds the "Read-only" attribute to the file.
- attrib +r *.txt
- Acts on a set of files.
- attrib /S +r *.txt
- Acts recursively in subdirectories.
For more, type "attrib /?".
Invokes another instance of Microsoft's CMD.
Above all, creates macros known from other operating systems as aliases. Moreover, provides functions related to command history, and enhanced command-line editing. Macros are an alternative to very short batch scripts.
Macro-related examples:
- doskey da=dir /s /b
- Creates a single macro called "da"
- doskey np=notepad $1
- Creates a single macro that passes its first argument to notepad.
- doskey /macrofile=doskeymacros.txt
- Loads macro definitions from a file.
- doskey /macros
- Lists all defined macros with their definitions.
- doskey /macros | find "da"
- Lists all macro definitions that contain "da" as a substring; see also FIND.
Command history-related examples:
- doskey /history
- Lists the complete command history.
- doskey /history | find "dir"
- Lists each line of command history that contains "dir" as a substring
- doskey /listsize=100
- Sets the size of command history to 100.
To get help on doskey from command line, type "doskey /?".
Compares files, displaying the differences in their content in a peculiar way.
Searches for a string in files or input, outputting matching lines. Unlike FINDSTR, it cannot search folders recursively, cannot search for a regular expression, requires quotation marks around the sought string, and treats space literally rather than as a logical or.
- find "(object" *.txt
- dir /S /B | find "receipt"
- dir /S /B | find /I /V "receipt"
- Prints all non-matching lines in the output of the dir command, ignoring letter case.
- find /C "inlined" *.h
- Instead of outputting the matching lines, outputs their count. If more than one file is searched, outputs one count number per file preceded with a series of dashes followed by the file name; does not output the total number of matching lines in all files.
- find /C /V "" < file.txt
- Outputs the number of lines AKA line count in "file.txt". Does the job of "wc -l" of other operating systems. Works by treating "" as a string not found on the lines. The use of redirection prevents the file name from being output before the number of lines.
- type file.txt | find /C /V ""
- Like the above, with a different syntax.
- type *.txt 2>NUL | find /C /V ""
- Outputs the sum of line counts of the files ending in ".txt" in the current folder. The "2>NUL" is a redirection of standard error that removes the names of files followed by empty lines from the output.
Searches for regular expressions or text strings in files. Does some of the job of "grep" command known from other operating systems, but is much more limited in the regular expressions it supports.
Treats space in a regular expression as a disjunction AKA logical or unless prevented with /c option.
- findstr /s "[0-9][0-9].*[0-9][0-9]" *.h *.cpp
- Searches recursively all files whose name ends with dot h or dot cpp, priting only lines that contain two consecutive decimal digits followed by anything followed by two consecutive decimal digits.
- findstr "a.*b a.*c" File.txt
- Outputs all lines in File.txt that match any of the two regular expressions separated by the space. Thus, the effect is one of logical or on regular expressions.
- findstr /r /c:"ID: *[0-9]*" File.txt
- Outputs all lines in File.txt that match the single regular
expression containing a space. The use of /c prevents the space from
being treated as a logical or. The use of /r switches the regular
expression treatment on, which was disabled by default by the use of /c.
To test this, try the following:
- echo ID: 12|findstr /r /c:"ID: *[0-9]*$"
- Matches.
- echo ID: 12|findstr /c:"ID: *[0-9]*$"
- Does not match, as the search string is not interpreted as a regular expression.
- echo ID: abc|findstr "ID: *[0-9]*$"
- Matches despite the output of echo failing to match the complete regular expression: the search is interpreted as one for lines matching "ID:" or "*[0-9]*$".
- echo ID: 12|findstr /r /c:"ID: *[0-9]*$"
- Outputs all lines in File.txt that match the single regular expression containing a space. The use of /c prevents the space from being treated as a logical or. The use of /r switches the regular expression treatment on, which was disabled by default by the use of /c. To test this, try the following:
- findstr /ric:"id: *[0-9]*" File.txt
- Does the same as the previous example, but in a case-insensitive manner.
- While findstr enables this sort of accumulation of switches behind a single "/", this is not possible with any command. For instance, "dir /bs" does not work, while "dir /b /s" does.
- To test this, try the following:
- echo ID: 12|findstr /ric:"id: *[0-9]*$"
- echo ID: ab|findstr /ric:"id: *[0-9]*$"
- findstr /msric:"id: *[0-9]*" *.txt
- Like above, but recursively for all files per /s, displaying only matching files rather than matching lines per /m.
Limitations of the regular expressions of "findstr", as compared to "grep":
- No support of groups -- "\(", "\)".
- No support of greedy iterators -- "*?".
- No support of "zero or one of the previous" -- "?".
- And more.
Other limitations: There is a variety of limitations and strange behaviors as documented at What are the undocumented features and limitations of the Windows FINDSTR command?.
Also consider typing "findstr /?".
- findstr at ss64.com
- findstr at Microsoft
- What are the undocumented features and limitations of the Windows FINDSTR command? at StackOverflow
Displays Windows IP Configuration. Shows configuration by connection and the name of that connection (i.e. Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection) Below that the specific info pertaining to that connection is displayed such as DNS suffix and ip address and subnet mask.
Displays the contents of a file or files, one screen at a time. When redirected to a file, performs some conversions, also depending on the used switches.
- more Test.txt
- more *.txt
- grep -i sought.*string Source.txt | more /p >Out.txt
- Taking the output of a non-Windows grep command that produces line breaks consisting solely of LF character without CR character, converts LF line breaks to CR-LF line breaks. CR-LF newlines are also known as DOS line breaks, Windows line breaks, DOS newlines, Windows newlines, and CR/LF line endings,as opposed to LF line breaks used by some other operating systems.
- In some setups, seems to output gibberish if the input contains LF line breaks and tab characters at the same time.
- In some setups, for the conversion, /p may be unneeded. Thus, "more" would convert the line breaks even without /p.
- more /t4 Source.txt >Target.txt
- Converts tab characters to 4 spaces.
- In some setups, tab conversion takes place automatically, even without the /t switch. If so, it is per default to 8 spaces.
Switch /e:
- The online documentation for "more" in Windows XP and Windows Vista does not mention the switch.
- The switch /e is mentioned in "more /?" at least in Windows XP and Windows Vista.
- Per "more /?", the switch is supposed to enable extended features listed at the end of "more /?" help such as showing the current row on pressing "=". However, in Windows XP and Windows Vista, that seems to be enabled by default even without /e.
- Hypothesis: In Windows XP and Windows Vista, /e does not do anything; it is present for compatibility reasons.
- more at ss64.com
- more at Microsoft, Windows XP
- more at Microsoft, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista
Provides various network services, depending on the command used. Available variants per command:
- net accounts
- net computer
- net config
- net continue
- net file
- net group
- net help
- net helpmsg
- net localgroup
- net name
- net pause
- net print
- net send
- net session
- net share
- net start
- net statistics
- net stop
- net time
- net use
- net user
- net view
- PING address
- PING hostname
Send ICMP/IP "echo" packets over the network to the designated address (or the first IP address that the designated hostname maps to via name lookup) and print all responses received.
Runs a function available from a DLL. The available DLLs and their functions differ among Windows versions.
- rundll32 sysdm.cpl,EditEnvironmentVariables
- In some Windows versions, opens the dialog for editing environment variables.
- rundll32 at ss64.com
- rundll at robvanderwoude.com
- dx21.com - lists rundll32 examples
Schedules a program to be run at a certain time, more powerful than AT.
Like SET, but affecting the whole machine rather than the current console or process. Not available in Windows XP; available in Windows Vista and later.
- setx at ss64.com
- setx at Microsoft, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista
Shuts down a computer, or logs off the current user.
Sorts alphabetically, from A to Z or Z to A. Cannot sort numerically: if the input contains one integer per line, "12" comes before "9".
- sort File.txt
- Outputs the sorted content of File.txt.
- sort /r File.txt
- Sorts in reverse order, Z to A.
- dir /b | sort
Assigns a drive letter to a local folder, displays current assignments, or removes an assignment.
- subst p: .
- Assigns p: to the currect folder.
- subst
- Shows all assignments previously made using subst.
- subst /d p:
- Removes p: assignment.
Ends one or more tasks.
- taskkill /IM AcroRd32.exe
- Ends all process with the name "AcroRd32.exe"; thus, ends all open instances of Acrobat Reader. The name can be found using tasklist.
- tasklist | find "notepad"
taskkill /PID 5792
- Ends the process AKA task with process ID (PID) of 5792; the assumption is you have found the PID using tasklist.
Lists tasks, including task name and process id (PID).
- tasklist | sort
- tasklist | find "AcroRd"
- tasklist | find /C "chrome.exe"
- Displays the number of tasks named "chrome.exe", belonging to Google Chrome browser.
Waits a specified number of seconds, displaying the number of remaining seconds as time passes, allowing the user to interrupt the waiting by pressing a key. Also known as delay or sleep. Available in Windows Vista and later.
- timeout /t 5
- Waits for five seconds, allowing the user to cancel the waiting by pressing a key.
- timeout /t 5 /nobreak
- Waits for five seconds, ignoring user input other than Control + C.
- timeout /t 5 /nobreak >nul
- As above, but with no output.
Workaround in Windows XP:
- ping -n 6 127.0.0.1 >nul
- Waits for five seconds; the number after -n is the number of seconds to wait plus 1.
Perl-based workaround in Windows XP, requiring Perl installed:
- perl -e "sleep 5"
- Waits for 5 seconds.
- timeout at ss64.com
- timeout at Microsoft
- How to wait in a batch script? at stackoverflow.com
- Sleeping in a batch file at stackoverflow.com
Displays a tree of all subdirectories of the current directory to any level of recursion or depth. If used with /F switch, displays not only subdirectories but also files.
- tree
- tree /f
- Includes files in the listing, in addition to directories.
- tree /f /a
- As above, but uses 7-bit ASCII characters including "+", "-" and \" to draw the tree.
A snippet of a tree using 8-bit ASCII characters:
├───winevt │ ├───Logs │ └───TraceFormat ├───winrm
A snippet of a tree using 7-bit ASCII characters:
+---winevt | +---Logs | \---TraceFormat +---winrm
Displays the location of a file, searching in the current directory and in the PATH by default. Does some of the job of "which" command of some other operating systems.
Available on Windows 2003, Windows Vista, Windows 7, and later; not available on Windows XP. An alternative to be used with Windows XP is in the examples below.
Does not find internal commands, as there are no dot exe files for them to match.
- where find
- Outputs the location of the find command, possibly "C:\Windows\System32\find.exe".
- for %i in (find.exe) do @echo %~$PATH:i
- Outputs the location of "find.exe" on Windows XP. The name has to include ".exe", unlike with the where command.
- where /r . Tasks*
- Searches for files whose name matches "Task*" recursively from the current folder. Similar to "dir /b /s Tasks*"
Copies files and directories in a more advanced way than COPY, deprecated in Windows Vista and later. Type xcopy /? to learn more, including countless options.
- xcopy C:\Windows\system
- Copies all files, but not files in nested folders, from the source folder ("C:\Windows\system") to the current folder.
- xcopy /s /i C:\Windows\system C:\Windows-2\system
- Copies all files and folders to any nesting depth (via "/s") from the source folder ("C:\Windows\system") to "C:\Windows-2\system", creating "Windows-2\system" if it does not exist (via "/i").
External links[edit]
- Windows XP - Command-line reference A-Z at microsoft.com
- Windows CMD Commands at ss64.com -- licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales[1], and thus incompatible with CC-BY-SA used by Wikibooks
- The FreeDOS HTML Help at fdos.org -- a hypertext help system for FreeDOS commands, written in 2003/2004, available under the GNU Free Documentation License


text:
The Fine Arts Center of Kershaw County in Camden will present Philip Grecian's stage adaptation of the beloved movie A Christmas Story (based in turn on the stories and memories of author Jean Shepherd) for a limited run of four performances, this coming Thursday (12/13) through Saturday (12/15) at 8 PM, with a Sunday matinee at 3 PM. Frank Thompson, recently seen as the titular Music Man at Town Theatre, directs Henry Kerfoot as young Ralphie, David Wilhite as the narrator (adult Ralphie) and Bill DeWitt (Thompson's partner in crime in The 39 Steps last spring at Town Theatre) as Ralphie's Old Man.
A Christmas Story takes place in the 1940s in the Midwest, and follows 9-year-old Ralphie Parker in his quest to get a genuine Red Ryder BB gun under the tree for Christmas. Ralphie pleads his case before his mother, his teacher and even Santa Claus himself, at a local department store. Of course, the response is "You'll shoot your eye out!" There will be some familiar scenes such as the boys' experiment with a wet tongue on a cold lamppost; Ralphie's father winning a lamp shaped like a woman's leg in a net stocking; and more. Lighthearted, fun, and heartwarming, A Christmas Story is sure to add laughter and warmth to your holiday season.
"With our production of A Christmas Story, our goal has been to present a fresh, new look
at a modern classic. There are certainly a few winks to the movie, as there most certainly should be, but there are also some differences between the two which have been lots of fun to explore," says director Frank Thompson. " Above everything else, I hope our audiences leave with the warm feeling one gets after having paid a happy visit to an old friend."
The cast also includes: Bettie Beaty as Mother, Louisa DeLoach as Randy, Benjamin Watson as Scut Farkas, Peggy Lane as Miss Shields, Zac Willoughby as Flick, Luke Meinyk as Schwartz, Ella Rescignio as Esther Jane Alberry, Sara Hendrix as Helen Weathers, William Antley as Red Ryder, plus Chip Summers, John Carrington, Don Jackson, Hank Kerfoot, Janet Brooks Holmes, Harry Little, Katrina Brickner, Michelle Brickner, Libby Kerfoot, Gabbi Magee, Robin Saviola, Lynne Summers, Juliana Willoughby, Tiffany Maples and Emma Ruth Maples.
For more information or tickets, call 803-425-7676 extension 300 or visit www.fineartscenter.org. The Fine Arts Center of Kershaw County is located at 810 Lyttleton Street in Camden. Box office hours are Monday through Wednesday and Friday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. and Thursday 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.


text:
Women Directors
95-year-old Shudia is waiting for her death. When Meir, her son, opens up an old wound- the kidnapping of her eldest daughter- an unusual portrait, replete with both humor and pain, reveals an ongoing inter-generational conflict.
Up Down and Sideways
In the rice fields of Phek, near the India—Myanmar border, singing is just as important as working. Just like their labor, the songs of the rice cultivators require many voices working together. They echo through the breathtaking mountains in an endless, hypnotic, circular conversation.
Daddy, Where is Mom and Grandma?
In 1996, when Itay was 11, his father Amiram Hochberg murdered his mother Shlomit and her mother Idda, and kidnapped Itay to Switzerland. The two episodes are part of a new 'True Crime' series that incorporate reenactments and interviews with key figures involved, among them Itay, who speaks of the events for the first time.
Yours in Sisterhood
All around the U.S., women are opening time capsules: letters they and other women sent to the editor of the feminist "Ms. Magazine" over 40 years ago. By recreating each letter's exact circumstances, the director helps today's women step into the shoes of those who came before them—and see themselves.
Sandi Tan wrote and directed a groundbreaking film that was supposed to change the face of cinema in Singapore. 25 years after the film's disappearance, she returns to the Island in search of clues, hoping to rediscover both the film and herself.
The Angels of Shakedown—a group of provocative Black stripper-dancers—were the night queens of the lesbian underground scene of Los Angeles. Leilah Weinraub's intimate film tells the story of how this unique community discovered its true power.
A Woman Captured
After being held as a slave for eleven years by a family that abuses and mistreats her, Marish takes a chance by trusting a filmmaker and telling her life story. The special intimacy created between the two leads them into an action from which there is no turning back.
A Train To The Horizon
Following a dream of a train storming out from the yard of her grandmother's housing project, Sharon arrives at the picturesque town Ofakim. Upon her arrival, a surprising, difficult and moving reality is revealed.
A Murder in Mansfield
When Collier Landry was 12, his father, a renowned doctor, murdered his beautiful mother in their mansion home. 26 years later, Collier returns to his hometown, accompanied by Academy-Award-winning director Barbara Kopple, and tries to find out what happened.
Raghu Rai, an Unframed Portrait
Famous Indian photographer Raghu Rai sets out on a photography trip to Cashmere with his daughter, Avani, who documents him. The film reveals Rai's relations with the subjects of his iconic works (including the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa) and becomes an intimate dialogue between father and daughter, seen through the lenses of two cameras.
The End of Fear
32 years ago a murder was committed in Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. The victim was Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, a controversial abstract painting priced at millions of dollars. The man who slashed the piece with a knife was caught right away, but then—just like in a good mystery thriller—the plot thickened.
Kusama - Infinity
At 90, Yayoi Kusama has millions of Instagram followers, a fat bank account, and a studio at the mental institution where she lives. The life story of the world's most successful Japanese artist is just as complex and surprising as her unique art.
An intimate glance to the lives of caretakers in a wildlife hospital, a world with rules of its own. The movie follows the dilemmas of its protagonists: Is every life one worth living? And when is the right moment to let go?
Renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman may have hit 70, but he is still a long way from putting down his instrument. As he looks back at his long, impressive career in this deeply personal film, he comes closer to understanding how and why he makes such stirring music.
Marianne Faithfull surrenders to the camera of Sandrine Bonnaire, allowing the actress-turned-director to paint a delicate and complex portrait, revealing surprising new layers in the singer's exciting life story.
Phoenix, 32, was born to the African Hebrew Israelite Nation in Israel. His father was expelled when he was 3, and Phoenix got his curse. Phoenix opens a new chapter, he wants to forgive his parents and live his dreams.
Over the Limit
Margarita Mamun's punishing journey to the 2016 Rio Olympics is filled with endless training sessions—and coping with her two coaches' merciless methods takes rare mental resilience. They are not afraid to switch from insults and humiliation to hugs and kisses and back again, all to shape her into a super-gymnast.
The King of Börek
The film follows the rise and fall of the Alkolombris - a proud family of Bulgarian bakers that immigrated to the newborn state of Israel, introducing their famous Bourekas pastry.
Departing from the etymological derivation of both "salary" and "soldier" from "salt", Salarium captures the entanglement of economic, military, and geological forces, which manifests in the figure of the sinkhole.
Memory Agents
A decade after the death of Adam Baruch, a controversial cultural figure, his children create a temporary museum that displays more than a thousand items from his vast archive, inviting key figures to guide them through memory's backstreets.
The Sun Ladies
360VR project. The Sun Ladies are a female-only Yazidi unit who fight to bring back their sisters and protect the honor and dignity of their people.
Hebrew Kisses
Newly repatriated from Russia, Manya tries to build a relationship with Erez, a native-born Israeli Jew. But to be with him she must first undergo the process of 'Giyur', and convert to Judaism.
The Prince And The Dybbuk
When the 'Polish Prince' died, thousands of upper-crusters walked beside his casket to his lavish mausoleum in Rome. Who was he? Why didn't he ever talk about his past? The film follows the twists and turns in the story of the mysterious filmmaker behind the Yiddish film The Dybbuk.
The Interpreter
The refugees and officials whose conversations he remotely interprets will never know just how much their stories affect their interpreter.
Director Iris Zaki enters the heart of Tekoa, a West Bank settlement, and sits down to talk to the locals. Though initially fearful of the left-wing invader, settlers from various backgrounds gradually open up to her. Their honest, surprising and sometimes funny conversations offer a fresh take on Israeli reality from both sides of the Green Line.
The Poetess
Hissa Hilal's body and face may be covered by a burka, but the bold Saudi poet lays everything bare in her poetry. The first woman to ever make it to the finals of the Arab world's most popular talent show stands in front of 75 million viewers and bravely holds a mirror up to them.
We Margiela
The Maison Margiela fashion house has always been enigmatic and singular. Headed by co-founder Jenny Meirens, the people behind the successful brand tell the untold story of one of the most creative and original groups in the fashion industry.
Place is a journey through time to a space that no longer exists. A unique piece of the ancient culture of Aleppo is preserved and its harsh present confronted. A work in progress.
Covered up
The personal journey of Rachel, an ultra-Orthodox film director, through marriage, divorce, matchmaking, and family life. Rachel unveils the world of ultra-Orthodox women and gives voice for the first time to their concealed inner world through the wig that covers up women's' hair.
Mini Miss
The 4-year-old contestants in this Brazilian beauty pageant have a thing or two to say to the camera.
My Name is Salt
Every year, thousands of families move to the desert in Gujarat to extract white salt from the earth. After eight months of back-breaking labor in a mesmerizing primal expanse, the monsoons come and lay waste to everything. When the rains stop, the ritualistic cycle starts anew.
The Candidate
An intimate look at Moshe Kahlon and his team, beginning with the 2015 election campaign, leading up to the Finance Ministry. The most promising and discreet man in Israeli politics has agreed for the first time to be filmed in his personal headquarters.
Double Exposed
Grandpa's photo archive shows the family as the picture-perfect culmination of the American Dream, but much is left out of the frame.
Five Men and a Caravaggio
Standing on the verge of a midlife crisis, a painter, a poet, a philosopher, a photographer and a writer find inspiration in a portrait of John the Baptist painted by Caravaggio over 400 years ago. The painting leads the men to talk, reflect and dream.
Stronger than a Bullet
Saeid Sadeghi spent 8 years photographing Iranian child soldiers during the war with Iraq. His photographs emphasized the zeal in their eyes, and are still used today to create war propaganda for martyrdom. Haunted by guilt, he goes in search of the surviving subjects of his photographs, in a film that offers a rare look at the hidden sides of Iran.
To perform incredible horseback acrobatics, the vaulters must become parts of a living machine.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist
Years after she became one of the iconic faces of Punk, shocking London with her provocative outfits, Dame Vivienne Westwood continues to be a pain in the establishment's backside despite the noble title. She is still a bold, subversive fashion designer, and now an activist intent on changing the world.
The Waldheim Waltz
The storm that followed Kurt Waldheim's successful bid for the Austrian presidency in 1986 has never really died down. Ruth Beckermann's film—winner of the Original Documentary Award at the Berlinale—sheds some light on that dramatic period, recounting the events and sorting out the 'fake news' from the facts.
The Last Chair
The Last Chair is a Virtual Reality documentary series about the last stage of life. With a mix of audio, 360o video and animation, you step into the daily life of Fred or Egbert.
The Other Side Of Everything
Winner of the IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary. For 70 years a locked door inside a Belgrade apartment has been hiding the turbulent past of a family and a nation. Aided by her mother, a political activist who had helped oust Milošević, the director tries to untangle her family's past and discovers that it cannot be separated from their country's frightening present.
Dudu Tassa & the Kuwaitis: Don't be so modest, You aren't that great!
Dudu Tassa & The Kuwaitis, a unique Jewish-Arab Israeli ensemble, join legendary band Radiohead to support them on their U.S. tour. They try to win the hearts of the audience with almost-forgotten Iraqi music, written a century ago by Tassa's grandfather and great uncle. This is a film about the dream, the excitement, the journey and the distance.
The German
In this docu-fiction thriller, a romance between a young German man and the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor spirals out of control in the grandmother's old house.
Julian Schnabel : A Private Portrait
This deeply personal, fiercely passionate portrait of Julian Schnabel showcases his works, both on canvas and on screen. It features Schnabel himself, his charismatic children, his relatives and his celebrity friends talking about his wild art and just-as-wild life.
Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami
'80s superstar Grace Jones still captivates the audience with the same ease as ever. This powerfully dynamic film follows her on stage and in an emotionally-charged visit with her family in Jamaica, revealing the surprisingly soft but no-less-impressive sides of the iconic diva.
The Gospel According to André
Born in the segregated American South, André Leon Talley grew up to become a superhero. Anna Wintour, Manolo Blahnik, Karl Lagerfeld, Tom Ford and Talley himself present a warm, funny and captivating image of the loudest, most colorful and touching Vogue editor of all.
Tracing Addai
A remarkable young man joins a group of fighters in Syria, leaving behind a long trail of questions.
Bloodless is a VR film about the murder of a Korean sex worker committed by a US soldier in 1992. Experience what cannot be said.
Home In Between
Home In Between is a 360-degree documentary about the people of Kara Tepe, a refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesvos.
In The Woods
Snow, ice, sweat and the sound of chainsaws. Giant trees are being cut down in the freezing silence of the Swiss woods.
Young Solitude
On the cusp of adulthood, with childhood still clinging to their bodies, high school students in a Parisian suburb talk among themselves with impressive candor. Claire Simon's camera captures them as they touch all the sensitive subjects they only dare to discuss with their peers.
Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat
In the years before his big break, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a wild and talented teenager, determined to become a superstar. Those who knew him in his early years tell the story of the road that led him to take the New York art scene by storm.
Love, Cecil
Cecil Beaton's gaze has shaped the way we all see the American and British elites. An award-winning designer and photographer, Beaton never stepped off the stage. Rare archival footage and Beaton's intimate diaries reveal a complex, fascinating man who devoted his life to the search for beauty.
Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars
Eric Clapton, one of the greatest guitarists of all time, offers deeply personal commentary and insights on the immense dramas experienced in both his personal life and musical career.
Distant Constellation
The eccentric residents of this Turkish retirement home seem to be living on another planet, but their memories revive worlds both near and far, fusing past and present together. This gentle, human and humorous film shows lives where time has taken on a new meaning.
A Perfect Housewife
All her life Jane rebelled against the conventions of Georgian Patriarchal society. After years, just before becoming a mother, Jane returns with a camera to try and understand her mother and her self, in relation to the men of the family.
Island of The Hungry Ghosts
The small community of Christmas Island helps millions of red crabs on their journey and holds rituals to appease restless ghosts. At the heart of this beautiful island's untamed jungle is a detention center holding hundreds of asylum-seekers, and the young therapist meant to help them strains under the emotional burden.
A Modern Man
Charlie Siem is at a crossroads. He's a gifted young violinist, a model for top fashion houses, and his bank account is bursting. So why is he still so restless? Will modern life allow him to be happy?
A Sister's Song
Can we ever truly know what is in a loved one's heart? A Sister's Song is the intimate, delicate story of two sisters, Marina and Tatiana, who live separated by a choice that Tatiana made when she became a nun.
The day the bomb fell on Hiroshima was also the day Akiko Takakura experienced a great closeness with her father.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has signed bold verdicts that changed the social, racial and gender landscape of the United States. In a rare personal film, RBG and her fans (including her granddaughter, young people sporting tattoos of her face, and Bill Clinton) reveal the real woman behind the lace collar.


text:
Alan & Sue
Moving from the hustle and bustle of Sydney, the move to The Arbour was all about taking time to enjoy life! As regular travellers, they love that they can lock up and leave and know their home will be taken care of.
As featured in The Sun Herald Retire In Style Liftout October 2011
Chooks and vegie patches are just two things about The Arbour Berry that appeal to energetic retirees Sue and Alan Selden. The couple retired three years ago and moved from Castle Hill to the over-55s development. "The thought of getting away from Sydney's traffic, in particular, was one of the reasons that attracted us to Berry," Sue Selden says.
When they aren't tending Alan's tomatoes and broad beans, feeding the seven chooks, attending aqua aerobics and gym classes or walking 20 minutes into the heart of Berry for their daily coffee and paper, they are somewhat further afield.
"We've got three trips booked for next year," Selden, 67, says. First is a visit to South Africa on the Queen Mary 2, where Alan will celebrate his 70th birthday. There's a European river cruise in April and May and a Mediterranean cruise in August.
The Seldens bought a freestanding home off the plan. Their property has two bedrooms and a study and Sue says she loves the design, which has a bedroom at either end of the house, each with access to separate bathrooms and the courtyard. Guests who stay "can still sleep in and enjoy the comfort of their own self-contained room", she says.
The move to Berry came after the Seldens decided the stairs in their two-level townhouse could pose some challenges as the couple aged. On a whim they took a drive to the southern highlands to have a look at The Arbour after seeing it in The
Sun-Herald. "We liked the whole philosophy of the architecture, it was very modern," says Selden, who worked as a manager of executive education programs at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management before her retirement.
She often returns to Sydney. "We've still got the railway station 20 minutes' walk away,'' she says. ''You can hop on the train and, in just under three hours, you're in Central Station and you can do the big smoke without the hassle. "I go up regularly. In fact, I'm going up next week to have coffee with a girlfriend and I can also combine that with a dental appointment or whatever is going on."
She confesses her "whatever" can often include department store sales.
The Seldens particularly like that none of The Arbour's residences have communal walls. "We're all self-standing buildings, which means you don't have the neighbour-knocking-on-your-wall sort of thing,'' Selden says. ''It's very private.
"We've got quite a young-thinking group of residents and even some of the older ones participate in all the activities, so we don't feel as if the next step is going to be the nursing home."
The garden and chooks help the community to bond. "The vegie patch in particular is quite a meeting spot for people," she says.
The asking price for a new two bedroom, two-bathroom home with a study and landscaped courtyard is about $595,000. The development has a pool, gym and cinema.
This year, Mbark won the NSW Regions and ACT Best Development prize for The Arbour Berry in the Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW Awards for Excellence.
As featured in the Sunday Telegraph – Sunday Property Over 55's Living liftout on 4 December 2011
Alan and Sue Selden love the secure, village atmosphere at The Arbour in Berry.
Three years after farewelling work and the big family home at Castle Hill, Alan and Sue Selden believe they've hit on the perfect mix for retirement happiness—buying into the luxury over-55s The Arbour Berry estate and having the freedom to travel the world.
''The beauty of being a village resident means we can simply lock up the house and head off knowing that our near neighbours will keep an eye on our place,'' said Mrs Selden, a former executive manager at the Macquarie Graduate School of Management.
''Our friends said that when we retired we would wonder what to do with our time. Now we wonder where the time goes, there's so much to do.''
In the past year alone the couple have taken a cherry blossom cruise to Japan, a 32-day cruise from Rome to Istanbul, tripped around Cairns and far north Queensland and joined a surprise wedding anniversary for friends in Canada.
The pair's 2012 diary is already ticked off for further globetrotting, with a trip to South Africa on the Queen Mary 2, another European river cruise in April/May and a Mediterranean cruise in August.
In between roaming, the pair enjoy the lifestyle of being part of The Arbour community.
''Alan (a former banker) is a keen gardener and has a plot in the vegie garden, so he's always keen to see new plantings ready to pick by the time we get back home.
''There are plenty of fellow gardeners who keep an eye on each other's patch, and it's also a gathering spot to catch up on what's happening around the place.''
Alan also loves chook duty, looking after his rostered chicken, Priscilla, as well the six others residing at Cluckingham Palace, and they both appreciate the fresh eggs and produce from his efforts.
What the Seldens don't miss is the daily battle with city traffic, enjoying instead the comfort of Sydney still being so accessible by rail. ''With the train station 20 minutes walk away, in just under three hours you're in Central Station and you can do the big smoke without the hassle,'' Mrs Selden said.
On living at The Arbour, she noted: ''We have quite a young-thinking group of residents and even some of the older people join in the activities . . . so we don't feel as if the next step is going to be the nursing home.''


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text: With the horrific event in Florida, 2018's first 45 days have already seen 18 school shootings. If you read BlueWisconsin, we know you were unlikely to vote for Screnock anyway. But we can all spread the word around the state that he's the NRA's candidate, and that voting Tuesday for Dallet or Burns is IMPORTANT.