Order in which command prompt executes files with

Question

What is the order in which the Windows command prompt executes files with the same name, but different extensions?

For example, I have a bunch of executable files (something.cmd, something.bat, something.exe). Which of these would be executed when I typed "something" into a command prompt (given they were on the path, etc.)? If that file did not exist which one would then be executed?

Is there a reference that describes this?

Answer 1

Okay, I did some quick experimentation based on some other searches I had going.

The gist is that the order of the commands is dependent on the order the extensions are stored in the PATHEXT environment variable. So initially I had:

PATHEXT=.COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD;.VBS;.VBE;.JS;.JSE;.WSF;.WSH;.RB;.RBW

and for the example above the order in which it would run it was:

something.exe
something.bat
something.cmd

Changing the order which they were defined in the PATHEXT environment variable did indeed change the order in which they were executed.