Command Line Tricks

Posted on April 28, 2010 by kentdyer

Some command-prompt tricks

In Bryce’s recent postings on http://www.technibble.com/scripting-your-own-computer-repair-tools-pt4/ he has provided some great information about batch scripting.

In the process, I blurted out that you can chain DOS commands together, but had to recant my statements..

There are several ways to do this, however:

First one is a re-direct:
> Re-direct the screen output to a file like the example:
DIR C: > somefile.txt

What is this doing?  This is taking what is being shown on the screen and re-directing the output to a file called: somefile.txt

Caveat: With one “>” this or any other command re-directed to this file will be over-written each and every time.  If you want to append (add to) the end of the file, just simply double it up:
“>>” like the example:
DIR C: >> somefile.txt

Next is a pipe “|” and is used for things like:
DIR C:\windows | more

Yawn, yeah I know that I can also do:
DIR /p C:\windows

and get the same results..

However, you can pass through things like (Be very careful here, please!!):
ECHO y|DEL C:\somedir\*.txt

So, what this does is to take the y (or yes response) and “pipe” it through the del command.

There are some other things that are a bit obscure that can be done too.  Your mileage may vary..

One command to do two actions..  Let’s see if we can do a Dir on two folders..
DIR C:\windows;”C:\program files”

Note: This is all one command-line command.  Pretty cool huh?  This does a Dir on both the C:\Windows and the C:\Program Files  in one command!!

Two commands to do at a one time..  Hmmm..
Now, let’s try to do two commands in one command from the command-line:
TYPE C:\boot.ini&DIR c:

Note: This is all one command.  This does Type the contents of the boot.ini file and then a Dir on C:\ drive in one command!!  It is important to note that if you do a DIR with an /s, you will traverse (go through all of the directories) in the C:\ drive and you will get a ton of results.

Caveat: If you use this in a batch file, you will need to do the following:
TYPE C:\boot.ini&&DIR C:

Note: the double “&&” to chain these two commands together in a batch file.

Note #2: You cannot do the following with XCOPY, for example..

XCOPY C:\Windows;”C:\Program Files” D:\SomeFolder

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