Microsoft batch file meets bash shellscript

Luca City, who already shared a nice readline keyboard shortcut with me, wrote me again on May 14 to share another unrelated, but very interesting trick:

Hi Rowan,
as you are interested in tricks and curiosities, I send you a thing.
I wanted a script to be runnable from both windows and linux and I found out a way to do it. Generally you can have two different files, one for each OS, but I started with this goal in mind and then it became a challenge. After trying a bit, playing with the strangest tricks of the two batch languages (bat and bash), I ended up with this solution. Actually it is not so useful but anyway…

Well Luca, regardless of the usefulness of your script, I happen to think that it’s pure genius, so I’m going to share it here:

echo off
echo ; set +v # > NUL
echo ; function GOTO { true; } # > NUL
 
GOTO WIN
# bash part, replace it to suit your needs
exit 0
 
:WIN
REM win part, replace it to suit your needs

Give the script a .bat extension for Windows and set the executable bit(s) for Unix.

Thanks, Luca, for sharing another nice trick with us.