To "Call" or "Not to Call" a batch file?

call is necessary for .bat or .cmd files, else the control will not return to the caller.
For exe files it isn't required.

Start isn't the same as call, it creates a new cmd.exe instance, so it can run a called batch file asynchronosly

As others have said, CALL is the normal way to call another bat file within a .bat and return to the caller.

However, all batch file processing will cease (control will not return to the caller) if the CALLed batch file has a fatal syntax error, or if the CALLed script terminates with EXIT without the /B option.

You can guarantee control will return to the caller (as long as the console window remains open of course) if you execute the 2nd script via the CMD command.

cmd /c "calledFile.bat"

But this has a limitation that the environment variables set by the called batch will not be preserved upon return.

I'm not aware of a good solution to guarantee return in all cases and preserve environment changes.

If you really need to preserve variables while using CMD, then you can have the "called" script write the variable changes to a temp file, and then have the caller read the temp file and re-establish the variables.

The `CALL' statement was introduced in MS-DOS 3.3

It is used to call other batch files within a batch file, without aborting the execution of the calling batch file, and using the same environment for both batch files.

So in your case the solution is to use CALL