Jeremy Simmons: The Blog

More DOS Scripting goodness. This snippet appends some arbitrary location to your PATH variable, so you can call the executables inside of it.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO %PATH% | FIND /I "C:\Folder1\Folder2\Folder with Spaces\bin\Release"
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Folder1\Folder2\Folder with Spaces\bin\Release

That, ladies and gentleman, will save you minutes of grief. Isn't that what it's all about anyway? makes it all worth while.

I've found myself using this pattern alot lately. I figured I'd post it for posterity.

@ECHO OFF

SET NOWD=%DATE%
SET mm=%NOWD:~4,2%
SET dd=%NOWD:~7,2%
SET yyyy=%NOWD:~10,4%

:: ECHO mm=%mm%
:: ECHO dd=%dd%
:: ECHO yyyy=%yyyy%

SET NOWT=%TIME%
SET hour=%TIME:~0,2%
SET min=%TIME:~3,2%
SET sec=%TIME:~6,2%
SET ms=%TIME:~9,2%

:: ECHO NOWT=%NOWT%
:: ECHO hour=%hour%
:: ECHO min=%min%
:: ECHO sec=%sec%
:: ECHO ms=%ms%

SET LOGFILENAME=%yyyy%%mm%%dd%_%hour%%min%%sec%%ms%.txt

:: ECHO %LOGFILENAME%

:: make sure to use a double arrow to append, not 'create'

ECHO %DATE% - %TIME% >> %LOGFILENAME%

ECHO Whatever your program should do >> %LOGFILENAME%

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.