It's always the little throwaway tweets that go picked up. Not the ones that we agonize over. I was doing some work at the command line and typed "dotnet --version | clip" to copy the .NET Core version number into the clipboard. Then I tweeted a little "hey, remember this great utility?" and then the plane took off. I landed two hours later and it had over 500 RTs. Madness.
It's funny that 10 year old command prompt utility (this was added in Vista) that everyone's forgotten elicits such an enthusiastic response.
Since you all love that stuff, here's a few other "forgotten command prompt features."
Windows folk: Did you know you can pipe cmd prompt commands into the clipboard? pic.twitter.com/fSE7ZHBBbB
— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) June 20, 2016
Some of these have been in Windows since, well, DOS. Others were added in Windows 10. What did I miss? Sound off in the comments.
Pipe command output to the clipboard
In Vista they added clip.exe. It captures any standard input and puts in the clipboard.
That means you can
- dir /s | clip
- ver | clip
- ipconfig /all | clip
You get the idea.
F7 gives you a graphical (text) history
If you have already typed a few commands, you can press F7 to get an ANSI popup with a list of commands you've typed. 4DOS anyone?
Transparent Command Prompt
After Windows 10, you can make the Command Prompt transparent!
Full Screen Command Prompt
Pressing "ALT-ENTER" in the command prompt (any prompt, cmd, powershell, or bash) will make it full screen. I like to put my command prompt on another virtual desktop and then use CTRL-WIN-ARROWS to move between them.
The Windows 10 Command Prompt supports ANSI natively.
The cmd.exe (conhost in Windows 10 1511+, actually) now supports ANSI directly. Which means BBS Ansi Art, of course.
Finally New Microsoft has its priorities straight. Early builds of ANSI Art support making its way into Windows 10! pic.twitter.com/UjWCrnrED2
— Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) February 5, 2016
Word wrapping
Oh, and the Windows 10 command prompt supports active word wrapping and resizing. It's about time.
Little Fit and Finish Commands
- You can change the current command prompt's title with "TITLE"
- You can change its size with MODE CON COLS=x LINES=y
- You can change the colors from a batch file with COLOR (hex)
What did I miss?
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