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  3. Command Line Geeks?

Command Line Geeks?

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  • B Blake Coverett

    I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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    Nemanja Trifunovic
    wrote on last edited by
    #5

    Blake Coverett wrote: How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? I do that, although Windows cmd is a joke. I wish they shipped tcsh with Windows.

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    • B Blake Coverett

      I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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      Daniel Turini
      wrote on last edited by
      #6

      Unless you want to start a religous war, like me


      Help me dominate the world - click this link and my army will grow

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      • B Blake Coverett

        I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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        Jeff Patterson
        wrote on last edited by
        #7

        I would like to have a look. Recently I have been using it alot. In the past only for renaming mass files with similar names. And I hate to admit it but I am... how did President Reagen put it... I am on my 8th anniversary of being 29. :-D Jeff Patterson Programmers speak in Code. http://www.anti-dmca.org[^]

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        • B Blake Coverett

          I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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          Roger Wright
          wrote on last edited by
          #8

          You mean there's a GUI in Windows?:confused: "Your village called -
          They're missing their idiot."

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          • D Daniel Turini

            Unless you want to start a religous war, like me


            Help me dominate the world - click this link and my army will grow

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            Blake Coverett
            wrote on last edited by
            #9

            Heh, that was an amusing read. Fortunately it wasn't a full fledged flamewar - it was clearly one moron who just couldn't grasp the point even with 7-8 people trying to wedge a clue into his narrow mind. :-D A good lesson to take away though, I'll start such articles with a disclaimer about how if you are morally offended by the idea that the command line has value you should stop reading immediately. -Blake

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            • B Blake Coverett

              I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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              Jason Hooper
              wrote on last edited by
              #10

              A funny thing to read, considering I came to the Lounge just now looking for an XML feed link so that I could make a command line utility to read the Lounge using just curses (ahem, ANSI) and the keyboard. I have three console windows open at any given time: a cygwin one for my home PC here, and two for my server, nirgle.net[^], one with Pine eternally open, and one for just miscellaneous stuff, usually updating my site. I simply couldn't imagine computer life without one. - Jason (SonorkID 100.611) The Code Project - Orange makes the art grow fonder

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              • B Blake Coverett

                I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                Douglas Troy
                wrote on last edited by
                #11

                I still keep-up with command-line stuffs (MS-DOS, UNIX, Linux, Etc...). I make it a habit of dropping to the command-line (or just use Total Commander) to bash out my file I/O ... I can type rather quickly, so I've been told, and I find that I can hack out commands faster than anyone can drag-and-drop ... SO ... having said that, YES, command-line utilities/tools are always a welcome site. :-) D.

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                • B Blake Coverett

                  I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                  Mike Ellison
                  wrote on last edited by
                  #12

                  I still use the command line and batch files a lot. I put up an article an a command line utility for sending email - http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/CpCommandLineEmailer.asp Check it out and let me know what you think.

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                  • B Blake Coverett

                    I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                    David Stone
                    wrote on last edited by
                    #13

                    I use the command line all the time...and I'm 16. Does that count? :-D


                    When I can talk about 64 bit processors and attract girls with my computer not my car, I'll come out of the closet. Until that time...I'm like "What's the ENTER key?" -Hockey on being a geek

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                    • B Blake Coverett

                      I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                      J Dunlap
                      wrote on last edited by
                      #14

                      I use the command line quite a bit, although I can't say I keep it open all the time. I'd be interested in learning about command line tricks, etc.

                      **"What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

                      FLUID UI Toolkit | FloodFill in C# & GDI+**

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                      • B Blake Coverett

                        I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                        leppie
                        wrote on last edited by
                        #15

                        $bash here :) leppie::AllocCPArticle("Zee blog");
                        Seen on my Campus BBS: Linux is free...coz no-one wants to pay for it.

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                        • B Blake Coverett

                          I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                          Mike Dimmick
                          wrote on last edited by
                          #16

                          Well, I guess you know this after the thread in the OS/Admin forum, but I use CMD quite a bit. I also use the [Win]+[R] key combination quite a lot - it can be easier to type what I'm looking for than to locate it. Annoyances: you can type 'My Documents' into the address bar in Explorer or IE, but it doesn't work from Start > Run. Most of my automated build scripts consist of batch files - including one I'm fairly proud of that builds two primary interop assemblies with space for signing, rebases the resulting DLLs then signs them. I think the reason Unix admins are so fond of the command line is that, well, for a lot of them there's no other way to do it. You can capture a sequence of commands as a script, then run that script everywhere you need to perform those operations. For Windows, there are still many things (even after Windows Server 2003, which has many more command-line tools) that can't be done from a command line but which can from the GUI. They're often exposed as scriptable objects (e.g. WMI) but there isn't an easy way to go from there (i.e. the GUI) to here (a WMI script). That is, the scripting solution is too far divorced from the regular mode of operation - if you want to script something, you have to learn a completely different way of doing it. Personally I find the GUIs easier the first few times, but then I'll start looking for the command line. net start mssqlserver is quicker than [Win]+[R], services.msc, browse to SQL Server, hit Start. Having said that, net start doesn't list available services, you have to know them. I can never remember the FTP server's service name. To list services, you have to use sc.exe, one of the least friendly tools I've ever used... I find it helpful to know the file names for some of the predefined consoles in Windows 2000 and XP. For example, Group Policy editor (which lets you set up privileges) is gpedit.msc, and Device Manager is devmgmt.msc. Of course Windows - on a Microsoft network - has Group Policy, which automatically applies settings from the domain controller at system startup and logon. So there's a bit less need for logon scripts and applying scripts to each system individually.

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                          • B Blake Coverett

                            I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                            Ian Darling
                            wrote on last edited by
                            #17

                            Yup, I even have the CP command explorer bar thingy installed :-) CTRL-M is my hero. Plus I almost always go to any directories in explorer by doing [WIN]->R and then typing in the path :-D This goes double for "desktop", which is quicker than finding that Show Desktop icon, clicking it, and then waiting 5 years for all the apps to minimize! I share Mike's comment that "My Documents" should be usable. The workaround I've used in the past is to stick a shortcut to that folder in the %WINDIR% directory, called the appropriate thing. -- Ian Darling "The moral of the story is that with a contrived example, you can prove anything." - Joel Spolsky

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                            • B Blake Coverett

                              I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                              Jorgen Sigvardsson
                              wrote on last edited by
                              #18

                              I'm 28, and I use it every now and then. I don't use it as much as I did during the DOS days though. I wish it had the same capabilities such as some of the UNIX shells does. Maybe I should download 4NT.. Hmm. -- Yeah well, my daddy can beat up your daddy!

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                              • D Daniel Turini

                                Unless you want to start a religous war, like me


                                Help me dominate the world - click this link and my army will grow

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                                Jorgen Sigvardsson
                                wrote on last edited by
                                #19

                                Geez! What an idiot.. I guess he never learnt the power of composition of commands. Piping, redirection of in/output streams, and substitutions are VERY powerful things indeed, that NO GUI could ever match (at least not with respect to usability and efficiency). -- Yeah well, my daddy can beat up your daddy!

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                                • M Michael Dunn

                                  Yes! I can't live without 4NT[^]. The filename completion and lots of extra built-in commands make life a lot easier. Heck, I even still have the DOS NU tools in my path (like ts - text search in file). They don't show LFNs but I don't care. ;) I think you need to lower your age guess to 25 though. ;P --Mike-- Ericahist | CP SearchBar v2.0.2 | Homepage | RightClick-Encrypt | 1ClickPicGrabber #include "witty-quote.h"

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                                  Jorgen Sigvardsson
                                  wrote on last edited by
                                  #20

                                  Wow. I just looked up 4NT and discovered that it costs money. Has it always been like that? IIRC, 4DOS was shareware on DOS (some features disabled). -- Yeah well, my daddy can beat up your daddy!

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                                  • M Michael Dunn

                                    Yes! I can't live without 4NT[^]. The filename completion and lots of extra built-in commands make life a lot easier. Heck, I even still have the DOS NU tools in my path (like ts - text search in file). They don't show LFNs but I don't care. ;) I think you need to lower your age guess to 25 though. ;P --Mike-- Ericahist | CP SearchBar v2.0.2 | Homepage | RightClick-Encrypt | 1ClickPicGrabber #include "witty-quote.h"

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                                    Thomas Freudenberg
                                    wrote on last edited by
                                    #21

                                    Michael Dunn wrote: Yes! I can't live without 4NT[^]. Me, too. Additionally, I have defined myriads of aliases to easen my daily work. Regards Thomas


                                    Disclaimer:
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                                    • J Jorgen Sigvardsson

                                      Wow. I just looked up 4NT and discovered that it costs money. Has it always been like that? IIRC, 4DOS was shareware on DOS (some features disabled). -- Yeah well, my daddy can beat up your daddy!

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                                      Michael Dunn
                                      wrote on last edited by
                                      #22

                                      It's always been payware as long as I can remember. --Mike-- Ericahist | CP SearchBar v2.0.2 | Homepage | RightClick-Encrypt | 1ClickPicGrabber "That probably would've sounded more commanding if I wasn't wearing my yummy sushi pajamas."   -- Buffy

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                                      • B Blake Coverett

                                        I'm thinking about posting a handful of articles on tools only of interest to those of us who live in console windows. The question, of course, is whether it's worth it. How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? -- -Blake (com/bcdev/blake)

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                                        John M Drescher
                                        wrote on last edited by
                                        #23

                                        Blake Coverett wrote: How many of you live with one or more command prompts open and use them for a significant part of your work? Certainly this has faded out over the years - are there any younger than say 35-40 who do this? I do and I am 31, however I have been programming since I was 8. I always have several 4nt windows open and I do most of my batch builds from there. I modified the vc autobuild sample so that I can batch build VC6 workspaces from the command line. There are also many things that are much faster from the command line like deleting files or how about a recursively deleting all .bak files in a tree. Thats quite a pain in the GUI and simple in the command window. Also I think of the times I need to process 100,000 or more medical images in a batch. Doing this with the GUI is very slow and cumbersome... I can write a one or two line 4nt script to execute all I need and if the parameters change I can repeat the whole batch with a new set of parameters. John

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                                        • D Daniel Turini

                                          Unless you want to start a religous war, like me


                                          Help me dominate the world - click this link and my army will grow

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                                          dandy72
                                          wrote on last edited by
                                          #24

                                          > Unless you want to start a religous war, like me Damn. I remember this one. The only time I had a pissing contest on CP, I think... :~

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