arc.bat

@echo off

rem  2010, 2013 Ross Angle. Released under the CC0 license.


rem  Lines beginning with "rem", like this one, are comments.

rem  The "@echo off" line above stops the following commands,
rem  including these comments, from being displayed to the terminal
rem  window. For a more transparent view of what this batch file is
rem  doing, you can take out that line.

rem  The @ at the beginning of "@echo off" causes that command to be
rem  invisible too.


rem  Now we'll keep track of ".", which is the current working
rem  directory, and return to that directory later on using "popd".
rem  This is mostly useful if we're running this batch file as part of
rem  a longer terminal session, so that when we exit Arc and return to
rem  the command prompt we're in the same directory we left.

pushd .


rem  Now we change the working directory to the Arc directory, so that
rem  when we're using Arc, our (load "...") statements will find files
rem  from that directory. More importantly, Arc itself also uses some
rem  (load "...") statements internally, which won't work if the
rem  working directory is wrong.

rem  This is the path to the Arc directory on my system. You'll
rem  probably need to change this. If your path has any spaces in it
rem  (like "C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Desktop\arc3.1"),
rem  you'll need to put quotes around the path.

rem  If the directory you're trying to refer to here is the same as
rem  the directory this .bat file lives in, you can use this command
rem  instead:
rem  cd "%~dp0"

cd C:\proj\tools\languages\arc\arc3.1


rem  Now for the command you've been waiting for. :-p This runs Racket
rem  from a specific place on my system--in fact, the place Racket
rem  installs itself by default on Windows. The "Racket" utility is
rem  the same as what previous versions of Racket (PLT Scheme) called
rem  "MzScheme", so keep that in mind if you need to change this path
rem  to accommodate your installation.

rem  Since we're running Racket from a specific file path, it doesn't
rem  matter whether it's actually possible to say "Racket -f as.scm".
rem  That's basically just a shortcut syntax that searches the
rem  directories listed in the PATH environment variable for any
rem  executable named "Racket". As for changing that variable... well,
rem  I'll just assume you don't care for now, 'cause that saves me the
rem  effort of explaining how not to mess up the PATH. :-p

rem  The -f option here means that we're loading a file. I'm using
rem  Racket 5.0.1, and if I were to add the -m ("main") option, as
rem  seen on http://www.arclanguage.org/install, it would cause an
rem  error because Arc doesn't actually define a "main" function.

"C:\Program Files\Racket\Racket" -f as.scm


rem  Here's the command for an MzScheme 352 setup I have on my system.
rem  I'm using the -m option here, as recommended, because a "Welcome
rem  to MzScheme" message is displayed if I leave it out.

rem  "C:\proj\tools\languages\racket\plt-352\MzScheme" -m -f as.scm


rem  The "pause" command displays a "press any key" message. If Racket
rem  exits with an error, this command keeps the batch script running
rem  long enough for you to read the error message. (Double-clicking a
rem  batch file opens a window that closes once the script is
rem  complete.)

pause


rem  Finally, as planned, we restore the working directory we started
rem  with.

popd

Thanks! I've made a note of that in the code.

Personally, I don't put these .bat files in my Arc directories, but the use of %~dp0 could easily come in handy for someone else, and I'll keep it in mind the next time I make files like these.

I've also mentioned the CC0 license so it's easier to include this file in other projects like you have. I consider it silly to assign attribution to this code since it's so simple and common, but the comments are substantial, so I figure I should license this explicitly after all.