Jeremy Simmons: The Blog

Open your command shell in Windows.

Start -> Run, CMD, <enter>

Go to a different drive, say, the D: volume, to a folder called \foo\bar

this might look like cd D:\foo\bar

Wait, I thought I said, CD, change directory.... what gives, I didn't go anywhere. When I say go, I mean go.

Here's how I go..

GO.CMD

@ECHO OFF
:: Change to 1 to display messages
SET DEBUG=0

:: Make sure there is a parameter
IF [%1]==[] GOTO MissingDir

:: If parameter 1 is a directory, it will have a nul file in it
:: If there is no nul, it's a file, not a directory
IF NOT EXIST %1\nul GOTO NotDir

:: Change working drive
:CWD
IF %DEBUG%==1 (
  ECHO %~d1
)
%~d1

:: Change working path
:CWP
cd "%~pn1"
GOTO :EOF

:: Missing a parameter
:MissingDir
ECHO You did not specify a place to go to
GOTO :Usage

:: Invalid Parameter
:NotDir
ECHO You specified a file, or an invalid directory
GOTO :EOF

:Usage
go.cmd DRIVE:\FULL\PATH\TO\FOLDER
GOTO :EOF

:End

Now, you can go anywhere, really...

Edit (12/18/2006)

This is really helpful, but I found myself using far too many keystrokes to open a console at the location in my clipboard.

Start + R -> cmd -> {ENTER} -> GO{SPACE}, ALT + E + P, {ENTER}... thats 12 keys to press to do this

Added an additional file to my %USERHOME% to automate this.

%USERHOME%\cgo.bat

cmd /k "c:\utils\go.cmd %1 && cls"

Now we're more like

Start + R -> cgo {SPACE} CTRL + V {ENTER}... Thats 9 keys. Thats a 25% reduction, and well worth my time in the one line script & the time documenting.

This saves me 1-3 seconds time I use it (average of 32)... amazing.