Suppress the 'press any key to continue' in batch script

Question

I am writing a batch script. After a stage in the command window it says \'press any key to continue\' and halts, and after something is pressed the script continues. How can I

Answer 1

Pause>nul Will make it not echo 'press any key to continue . . .'

Answer 2

That's the output of the PAUSE command:

http://ss64.com/nt/pause.html

The problem with PAUSE is that it's often necessary when you run a batch file from Windows explorer (or you cannot read the output) but it's annoying in the command prompt. I asked about it here and I was suggested a nifty trick:

Conditional PAUSE (not in command line)