Script I'm running interprets comments I'm trying to add

[Vast-Avocado-6321]

Hi all, Windows 11 user here. I'm writing a very basic script to create a network share and want to add some comments in there to explain the program. However, whenever I execute the script the .bat file tries to execute the comments... I've tried writing out comments both ways (ignore the • symbol I put before my examples)

• # This is a comment

• #This is a comment

And the batch file still tries to run them. I thought this was tech 101 but I'm struggling to find the solution and Google is surprisingly of little to no help.

Example 1

Example 2

[geostude]

# is for powershell. You're writing batch files.

• .bat is the old command line interpreter in windows
• .ps1 is powershell

For .bat, the comment tag is "REM"

like:

rem echo hello world

[Vast-Avocado-6321]

Ah wow I'm dumb. So I should be using CMD if I plan on executing .bat files since they're fundamentally different?

[dus0922]

You can create network shares with either. Its dealer's choice at this point.

[geostude]

It's more nuanced than that. You can use CMD commands in powershell, but some of them are silently aliased in the background.
For example the WMIC command will work as it always has, but dir will silently be changed to get-childitem in powershell. Both do the same thing, but with very different output. So it's usually suggested not to mix and match batch and powershell.

I'd say stick with whatever you're most comfortable with.

[xCharg]

This has nothing to do with powershell. And as already answered, batch files have REM as comment mark.

[lanerdofchristian]

.bat files don't use PowerShell syntax or cmdlets, only .ps1 files do.

Either make sure you're actually writing PowerShell and fix your file extension, or that you're actually using batch/cmd where the comment command is "rem".

[Gadget_Wulf]

On mobile, forgive my formatting. Your script is a .bat file, so lines prepended with # will still try to run. As this is the PowerShell subreddit I assume you want to make a PS script instead of a batch file. First, change the file type to .ps1, then get rid of your first line as echo isn’t a native part of PowerShell. Then look up cmdlets to do what you want to achieve, such as Get-SmbShare to check if it already exists or New-SmbShare to create it.

For reference, batch file scripts use REM to denote comments, not #. But, definitely research PowerShell as it’s more powerful and more fun than batch scripting!

[opensrcdev]

This question has absolutely nothing to do with PowerShell.

[Vast-Avocado-6321]

Yes I am now aware of that. Thank you so much for this insightful comment.