According to https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Batch-Mode.html in noninteractive mode, Emacs does not read commands from the terminal. However, $cat test.el (princ noninteractive) (princ (read-string "")) $C:\emacs\bin\emacs.exe --script test.el t [waiting for user input] Calling $C:\emacs\bin\emacs.exe --script test.el < test.el - or - $C:\emacs\bin\emacs.exe --script test.el < NUL works as expected (script finishes without user-input ^D). Emacs should never wait for interactive user input in batch mode. I'm ready to provide any additional info, Andrey Paramonov --- In GNU Emacs 25.2.1 (x86_64-w64-mingw32) of 2017-04-24 built on LAPHROAIG Windowing system distributor 'Microsoft Corp.', version 6.3.9600 Configured using: 'configure --without-dbus --without-compress-install 'CFLAGS=-O2 -static -g3'' Configured features: XPM JPEG TIFF GIF PNG RSVG SOUND NOTIFY ACL GNUTLS LIBXML2 ZLIB TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS Important settings: value of $LANG: RUS locale-coding-system: cp1252 Features: (shadow sort mail-extr emacsbug message idna dired format-spec rfc822 mml mml-sec password-cache epg gnus-util mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231 mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader sendmail rfc2047 rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util help-fns mail-prsvr mail-utils cus-start cus-load paren finder-inf info tex-site package epg-config seq byte-opt gv bytecomp byte-compile cl-extra help-mode easymenu cconv cl-loaddefs pcase cl-lib time-date mule-util tooltip eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel dos-w32 ls-lisp disp-table w32-win w32-vars term/common-win tool-bar dnd fontset image regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list newcomment elisp-mode lisp-mode prog-mode register page menu-bar rfn-eshadow timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax facemenu font-core frame cl-generic cham georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese charscript case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev minibuffer cl-preloaded nadvice loaddefs button faces cus-face macroexp files text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote w32notify w32 multi-tty make-network-process emacs)