No such thing, I'm afraid.

That's one of the reasons why a Unix shell is so much more powerful than the
DOS command line.

echo is a standard dos command. I don't remeber if there is any command
similar to read for dos though. The GnuWin32 project
(http://gnuwin32.sf.net) has nearly all the gnu unix tools for msdos.
You'd probably have no problem using gnu read and gnu echo.

I'm not so sure about that. I know echo works in both.

In linux:
[myusername@cm-208-152-6-95 etc]$ echo "some stuff"
some stuff
[myusername@cm-208-152-6-95 etc]$

In dos:
Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.

C:\>echo some stuff
some stuff

C:\>

I do write the occasional windows script but I've never writen anything
interactive with the user so I don't know what the command is for read.

set filename=
echo Enter file name
choice /N /C
echo %filename%

why don't you use cygwin ?
www.cygwin.com or www.redhat.com/software/tools/cygwin
it's reliable, it's fast, it's ...free

i'm getting following error:
----
C:\tmp\1.bat
C:\tmp>set filename=

C:\tmp>echo Enter file name
Enter file name

C:\tmp>choice /N /C
'choice' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\tmp>echo
ECHO is on.