Specifying the command processor necessary if you do any redirection or piping, which are handled directly by the command interpreter.

For example:
Shell 'find c:\temp\names.txt "Fred" > c:\temp\Frednames.txt'
will fail, while
Shell '%COMSPEC% /c find c:\temp\names.txt "Fred" > c:\temp\Frednames.txt'
will work.

You need to know what's in your batch files - if they use redirection (<>) or piping (|), you need to specify %COMSPEC% /C, otherwise you don't. If you always specify the command processor, you'll be fine. (of course, there's an extra process sometimes).

Glenn
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Actually I am a Rocket Scientist! \:D