Show a popup/message box from a Windows batch file

Is there a way to display a message box from a batch file (similar to how xmessage can be used from bash-scripts in Linux)?

First of all, DOS has nothing to do with it, you probably want a Windows command line solution (again: no DOS, pure Windows, just not a Window, but a Console).

You can either use the VBScript method provided by boflynn or you can mis-use net send or msg. net send works only on older versions of windows:

net send localhost Some message to display

This also depends on the Messenger service to run, though.

For newer versions (XP and onward, apparently):

msg "%username%" Some message to display

It should be noted that a message box sent using msg.exe will only last for 60 seconds. This can however be overridden with the /time:xx switch.

I would make a very simple VBScript file and call it using CScript to parse the command line parameters.

Something like the following saved in MessageBox.vbs:

Set objArgs = WScript.Arguments
messageText = objArgs(0)
MsgBox messageText

Which you would call like:

cscript MessageBox.vbs "This will be shown in a popup."

MsgBox reference if you are interested in going this route.

Might display a little flash, but no temp files required. Should work all the way back to somewhere in the (IIRC) IE5 era.

mshta javascript:alert("Message\n\nMultiple\nLines\ntoo!");close();

Don't forget to escape your parentheses if you're using if:

if 1 == 1 (
   mshta javascript:alert^("1 is equal to 1, amazing."^);close^(^);
)

This will pop-up another Command Prompt window:

START CMD /C "ECHO My Popup Message && PAUSE"