tsunami

introduction

cmd.exe (Wikipedia) is a Windows shell for NT through Vista and probably beyond. It will be obsoleted by PowerShell, but it will unfortunately be around for a long time. This page exists to lessen the pain you experience when dealing with cmd.exe.

augmentation

I highly suggest downloading everything in GNU Coreutils to get much better text processing.

replacement "GUIs"

• Take Command

questions

Best cmd.exe documentation?

some syntax

• comment by prepending a line with REM
• prevent a line from being echoed by prepending @
• turn off echoing: @echo off
• cmdline args: %1, %2, ...
• pushd and popd to save/restore paths while cding around
• cd.. works just like cd ..
• `cd ` to go to the root
• pushd \server\installs to access UNC paths
• prompt for value: set /p my_variable=Enter a value, please:
• print variable: echo %my_variable%
• help
  • help
  • set /?
  • for /?
  • if /?
  • goto /?
  • call /?

random stuff

sed s/^|^|/^|\"\"^|/g
is the same as
sed "s/||/|\"\"|/g"