This method has the disadvantage that your batch file may "accidently" really use the label to jump to. As Marc Stern points out in one of his MS-DOS batch files Tips & Tricks, this can be solved by using a double colon ( :: ) as the first chara

it is valid and won t generate an error message in any DOS or Windows version. Labels, on the other hand, whether valid or not, should always start at the first non-whitespace character in a command line.