Today's HOT Dos Tip...

Beat your face against a brick wall if you didn't know about this short-cut in the command prompt.

That's right honey. You can use wildcards, such as the '*', with the 'cd' command.

This is particularly useful with loooooong directory names and weird directory names.

Here's a CSS version of the graphic...

C:\>cd progr*

C:\Program Files>_



Every time another programmer spots me doing this they gasp in amazement, fall on the floor and begin to twitch. It's an embarrassment. Thanks to Edgar Smith for showing me this one, a few years back now...

'Jason' on Tue, 31 May 2005 10:47:14 GMT, sez:

Also, if you use PowerToys (or the appropriate reg hack) you can select a key (I use TAB) to autocomplete the file or folder name. It also cycles through possible matches. eg:

C:\>cd d(TAB)
C:\>cd dev(TAB again)
C:\>cd "Documents & Settings"(TAB again)
C:\>cd downloads(ENTER)
C:\downloads>_

'Matt Ranlett' on Tue, 31 May 2005 12:55:30 GMT, sez:

Not only is the ability to use wildcards nice, but the /d switch enables you to change drives as well, so you can start the command prompt and
c:\documents and settings\MyUser> cd /d i:\w*\n*\o*\ProgramDll1\s*
and end up at
i:\work\NextRelease\Objects\ProgramDll1\source>

very handy, especially when you want to copy the path from the Windows Explorer address bar and you don't have any power toys or registry hacks in place!

'David Stone' on Tue, 31 May 2005 14:26:29 GMT, sez:

That's interesting. I've never installed any PowerToys, yet the command prompt does tab autocomplete for me.

'secretGeek' on Tue, 31 May 2005 21:14:30 GMT, sez:

cheers jason, matt and david.

yep -- i haven't got any powertoys on this box, but tab does indeed do autocomplete, at least in XP .

'Dan F' on Tue, 31 May 2005 23:21:10 GMT, sez:

yowzers, nice tip!

'secretGeek' on Thu, 02 Jun 2005 21:17:56 GMT, sez:

Wow, this little tip was picked up by the excellent Julia Lerman. I hope she didn't slam her face too hard.

And Gaspar Torriero (http://www.gaspartorriero.it/blogger.html) says:

"Ho apena scoperto da Secret Geek che nella riga di comando è possibile usare il carattere jolly con cd.

Adesso vado a pestare la faccia contro un muro di mattoni."

Couldn't have put it better myself. I'm guessing that "faccia contro un muro" means "face with a wall" -- so he may also have done some damage there.

Where ever in the world you are: watch out for developers with broken noses.

'Yorai Aminov' on Fri, 24 Jun 2005 06:14:13 GMT, sez:

Tab autocomplete comes built in with Windows XP and 2003. You might have to enable it manually, though:

Start a command prompt, click on its icon to open the system menu, and select "Defaults". In the Properties dialog, select the "Options" tab, and check the "AutoComplete" checkbox, then click OK. New command prompt windows will then have tab autocomplete.

'Ben' on Fri, 24 Jun 2005 07:34:07 GMT, sez:

You can also drag the folder from the address bar in Windows Explorer into a command prompt window. You need to type "cd " first for it to be any use.

'craig' on Fri, 24 Jun 2005 16:30:54 GMT, sez:

The wildcards work the other direction as well:

c:\>cd *les
c:\Program Files>

'Robert' on Sun, 26 Jun 2005 01:58:14 GMT, sez:

Another handy batch file is to do something like this:

CD $1
CLS
ECHO $1
DIR /W
TYPE README.TXT

and save it in a PATH folder as "go.bat" or something, then use it like CD. It clears the screen, does a DIR summary and prints the readme file in the folder if there is one every time you open a folder. The variation on this that I use checks for the existance of a readme file first however.

The other batch file I use out of habit prints the errorlevel of the command at the prompt. IE:

ERRN MYPROG
Hello from MYPROG!
0
C:\>_

That's handy when writing command line programs that return useful error codes for debugging. If anyone wants the source for these let me know.

-Robert
robeddielee@hotmail.com

'Dave' on Sun, 26 Jun 2005 12:22:47 GMT, sez:

tcsh/ksh/bash, cygwin, anyone?

'mtVessel' on Thu, 30 Jun 2005 10:35:22 GMT, sez:

And for us Luddites who are still on Win2K, launching the console with the /f option turns file completion on, as in:

cmd /f:on

CTRL+D cycles through directory names, CTRL+F cyles through filenames, so:

C:\> cd doc //CTRL+D yields...
C:\> cd "Documents and Settings"

'Brian Lounsberry' on Wed, 27 Jul 2005 01:08:26 GMT, sez:

monad anyone?

'Gav' on Mon, 03 Oct 2005 19:05:22 GMT, sez:

Very nice thnks for the tips

'Arun' on Wed, 18 Jan 2006 07:39:48 GMT, sez:

'mtVessel' thank you for your information. it helps me a lot.

regards
arun

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