One last idea:
The "doskey" utility, available at the NT command line, provides a facility called "macro", which allows you to specify aliases for the command line without having to change your search path or write a batch file for each EXE file you are interested in. Doskey also provides command-line history for old versions of DOS.
Microsoft provides doskey, so you know that it will be on any system you need to use. Doskey has been shipping with Windows (and, before that, MS-DOS) since something like the mid 1990s.
You need to run a command like this once:
doskey /macrofile="c:\somewhere\doskey.macros.txt"
The doskey.macros.txt is a plain text file that has a kind of "alias = command" format, with one alias per line. It looks something like this, with some "unix-like" aliases that I used to use, including the one for npp:
ls = dir $1
mv = move $*
cp = copy $*
cat = type $*
pwd = cd
history = doskey /history
np = "c:\somewhere\notepad++\notepad++.exe" $*