title: What are these lines of batch code for?
body: <p>I came across the following batch code on SuperUser, the purpose of which is to programmatically replace a folder's icon. </p>
  
  <pre><code>CD "%userprofile%\desktop"
  MKDIR "TEST FOLDER"
  ATTRIB +s "TEST FOLDER"
  CD "TEST FOLDER"
  COPY /Y "%userprofile%\desktop\image.ico" "./image.ico"
  ECHO [.ShellClassInfo] &gt;&gt; desktop.txt
  ECHO ConfirmFileOp=0 &gt;&gt; desktop.txt
  ECHO NoSharing=1 &gt;&gt; desktop.txt
  ECHO IconFile=image.ico &gt;&gt; desktop.txt
  ECHO IconIndex=0 &gt;&gt; desktop.txt
  ECHO InfoTip= &gt;&gt; desktop.txt
  CHCP 1252 &gt;NUL
  CMD.EXE /D /A /C (SET/P=ÿþ)&lt;NUL &gt; desktop.ini 2&gt;NUL
  CMD.EXE /D /U /C TYPE desktop.txt &gt;&gt; desktop.ini
  DEL /F /Q desktop.txt
  ATTRIB +S +H desktop.ini image.ico
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get the rest of the script easily enough, but I'm having trouble understanding these three lines:</p>
  
  <pre><code>CHCP 1252 &gt;NUL
  CMD.EXE /D /A /C (SET/P=ÿþ)&lt;NUL &gt; desktop.ini 2&gt;NUL
  CMD.EXE /D /U /C TYPE desktop.txt &gt;&gt; desktop.ini
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>SS64 tells me <code>chcp 1252</code> is related to something called a <a href="http://ss64.com/nt/chcp.html" rel="noreferrer">"code page"</a>, 1252 corresponding to "West European Latin", so my best guess is that this forces the script to use a Latin character set. The second two lines open instances of CMD; <a href="http://ss64.com/nt/cmd.html" rel="noreferrer">SS64</a> says the /A switch on the first makes it output in ANSI while the /U on the second makes it output Unicode. That's about as much as I can speculate on, and I'd really appreciate it if someone could go through each major part of these three lines and tell me what they're doing.</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>