Looking for a better Windows XP command-line interface. The Visual Studio Command Prompt isn't near as nice as the Linux/OSX terminals.
Thoughts?
edit:
Answers: Console on Sourceforge, and the Windows Powershell. Thanks, I'll go dig them up and evaluate them.
The Cygwin package is too much overhead for what I want.
edit2:
Looks like the Windows Powershell for now. Its copy&paste functionality isn't great, but MS supports it.
Take a look at Console2 http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/
It's features:
"multiple tabs, text editor-like text selection, different background types, alpha and color-key transparency, configurable font, different window styles"
As has your question been tagged, have you tried Windows PowerShell? It's paradigm is based on unix's pipes but instead of outputting text the processes output .Net objects.
cygwin? www.cygwin.com. Or mingwin?
Cygwin
This is an answer extending line.
I'm not clear on what you mean by Linux/OSX command prompts being "nice". If you just mean that they provide more utilities, I usually install Windows Services for Unix to add common programs like grep and vi.
I see you put "powershell" as one of your tags. Maybe you could help direct our answers by explaining what you don't like about PowerShell as a replacement for cmd.exe?
I use Take Command from JP Software
Cygwin is a good alternative. You can run Bash or other shells on Windows. You get most of your classic Linux/UNIX commands, shell scripting, etc. You even get the GNU compilers and can avoid Visual Studio if you wish. From Cygwin, you can access your regular Windows programs, drives, etc so there's rarely a reason to go back to cmd.exe.
If you are just looking to automate tasks via shell scripts (not interactive shell), then you should look at Windows Scripting Host. WSH is a feature-rich scripting environment for Windows that comes pre-installed on all modern versions of Windows.
I've been combining putty, cygwin, screen, and zsh(not bash) lately. I like a lot of the features of zsh, like autocd which and auto-pushd, which put the directories you change into onto the directory stack without having to type pushd. I also like that fact that multiple shells share history, and don't overwrite each other. Screen lets me run multiple zsh shells in one putty window. You can get zsh and screen from the cygwin site. I run: putty -cygterm screen
You'll also need the patched version of putty that has the -cygterm support.
GitBash by git is also a good option. It can be configured to be used in unix like environment.
It can be downloaded from here http://msysgit.github.io/
Related
I am a Mac guy who is used to Mac's Terminal. Now I am using Windows.
Whats the diff between those CLI options?
When should I use one over the other?
Are there more CLI options that I should consider?
What CLI would you use if you were a Mac person trying to adapt to Windows?
The reason I am trying to use Windows, is that I want to ensure the CLI of my Docker projects work for Windows users, that I can write files coming from my container to Windows and ensure my README files have instructions for Windows users. And basically test everything I do on Windows too, like Python.
Git bash is bash, which is IIRC also the default shell on MacOS. It is not the default shell on Windows, although several implementations exist (CygWin, MinGW, ...).
Git is bundled with a number of POSIX (UNIX/Linux/etc.) utilities in addition to bash; in order to avoid "collisions" with similarly named Windows commands, the most common installation option is to install bash in such a way that the other POSIX commands are only available when running bash. The Git installer will create a shortcut to launch this "private" version of bash, hence "git bash".
The Windows command prompt runs the default Windows shell, CMD.EXE, which is a derivative of the old MS-DOS command shell, COMMAND.COM. It is much less capable than most POSIX shells; for example, it did not until relatively recently support an if/then/else construct, and it does not support shell functions or aliases (although there are some workarounds for these limitations).
PowerShell is more of a scripting environment. I'd compare it to Perl on UNIX/Linux systems -- much more powerful than the standard shell, but not necessarily something I'd want to use at the command line.
One thing to be aware of is that some of the nicer PowerShell features may require you to update your version of PowerShell -- the version bundled with Windows is typically a few years old. And updating PowerShell usually requires admin privilege; depending on the version, you may also need to update the .NET framework.
If I were a Mac person trying to adapt to Windows ... it depends. In the short term it would be easier to use something familiar like bash. But long term, you -- and more importantly, your potential users -- may not want to be dependent on a third party tool, especially since for Windows users that will typically present an additional learning curve.
As to which to use when ... it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish -- both in terms of technical functionality and the interface you want to present to your users. As noted above, I'd consider PowerShell more appropriate for scripting than the CLI, unless you just need to run a cmdlet (either a built-in or one you've created yourself).
This is a high-level overview of some of the differences between the shells, not a feature by feature comparison.
CMD (Command Prompt) and PowerShell are both shells for Windows. CMD.exe was borne from COMMAND.COM, which was itself born from MS-DOS, and has some logical constructs and can run programs, process output, and do most basic tasks you would expect from a shell. It is generally considered very limited based on what other shells can do, but is not incapable if you know how to use it. However, it was never really "designed", with new features getting tacked on without a clear roadmap.
Powershell is a shell designed from the ground up with ties into .NET and has more modern language constructs built in. Microsoft designed Powershell as a replacement to CMD.exe and batch scripting, though CMD is far from being deprecated. Powershell can call directly into .NET classes, work with WMI objects natively, and has built in remoting capabilities. It is more akin to a programming or scripting language than batch scripting is. There is a much stronger community surrounding Powershell today than there is for batch scripting, and it is generally recommended to write new code in Powershell than to continue to use batch (CMD) scripting.
Powershell does feel like CMD at first. You can run programs in it and process their output, and in most cases programs will behave exactly the same whether they are run from Powershell, or from CMD. However, you will quickly notice some differences - not all variables are considered environment variables, variables are prefixed with a $ as opposed to being wrapped in %, and the Powershell pipeline is far more powerful than the CMD pipeline. Powershell is also entirely object-oriented, which is unique when compared to most other shell languages which are primarily text based.
You can read more here about why Powershell is recommended over batch scripting, and there is a good bit of history on CMD.exe and batch files as well.
Git Bash is the same bash shell you are used to on Linux and MacOS but instead compiled for Windows. It has the Git prefix with the name to indicate it was installed with Git for Windows, a packaging of git and various *nix utilities compiled for Windows for use with git. You can run sh and bash scripts in it, as well as call the Unix programs it installs with it.
The Unix utilities can generally be run in CMD or PowerShell too, but by default the installer does not add these utilities to the SYSTEM or USER PATH, as to not potentially override the same utilities the user may use in other contexts. Basically, it isolates the utilities installed with Git Bash to Git Bash.
Outside of git automation, I wouldn't recommend using Git Bash itself for anything production related, you would probably rather manage an installation of cygwin, msys2, or another Unix compatibility layer yourself in that case. But it can be a handy shell to have during development, although these days I generally prefer PowerShell over bash for Windows scripting.
In the past, I have used MATLAB sparingly from Linux machines at work, and I far and away preferred using the '-nodesktop' option. On all Unix-like machines I've worked on this option allows me to control STDIN and STOUT with relative ease, but on Windows(using Cygwin) this option spawns a new window and control is returned to the calling shell!
Basically, I would like to know if there is any way that I can force MATLAB to behave as it would on a Unix-like machine?
Thanks!
Short answer: You can not.
A longer answer can be found on their website.
-nodesktop behaves differently depending if you are on Windows vs
Linux or Mac. On Windows we provide a boring Command-Window only
interface that lacks the “bells and whistles” of the regular Command
Window or the full Desktop.
So you can use -nodesktop, but it pops up that annoying command line only window.
my goal: to create a suite of scripts that do some common system tasks, which include these
copy/move/list/search/grep files
watch/start/stop processes
run queries against Oracle via sqlplus
i grew accustomed to using Cygwin/bash to ease my life at work, and frankly speaking, i don't want to move away from bash language and start learning PowerShell, for example - so i started searching for a way to run bash scripts on Windows, ... preferably something alternative to Cygwin.
the truth is that i am still not pleased with Cygwin installation, and the fact that there is no simple way around it, that it is targeting more or less expert users, and there are a number of things that might pop up during the installation. i mean. what i am trying to do now is to write a suite of scripts that will target someone less expert than me (and i am in no way a real expert) - in most cases some kind of an administrator who doesn't want to know the script details.
i am thinking that this user will also want to be able to run these scripts on another machine, and i want to be able to explain him/her how to do it, without just saying, call the support, and, me, eventually (so that we can install cygwin on another machine etc etc.)
i tried MinGW(msys) but it also needs manual steps to set things up - i mean, these manual steps have become something of a de facto standard in these Windows ports (sorry, maybe i have a mood for bragging). win-bash looked like it could be a solution, but i ended up trashing it too, because of the old bash version, and its inability to do things i was able to do in cygwin - specifically
here documents
things like "cmd /C dir *" (don't know why) - and yes, i do cmd /C dir in cases i am in some kind of shared network folder with thousands of files, and ls is significantly slower than dir
my questions at last:
am i doomed to use PowerShell? i guess i will, reluctantly, if i have to
is there a simple pre-packaged "slim" cygwin installation.. or, portable cygwin, even better? there is a cygwin-portable project on sourceforge, but it's not that doesn't need those manual steps, again, apparently - is there a way to automate those steps, perhaps? and if there is, i wonder why somebody hasn't done it already? - and then, would it be possible to call bash scripts from Windows command prompt using a simple command like "bash somescript.sh"?
thanks for your attention.
As mentioned here, the Cygwin installation can totally be scripted and parametrized to ran in a silently and automatic mode.
If you define the minimal list of cygwin packages you need, just use a little .bat script that call the cygmin setup executable like this
setup.exe --packages=list_of_packages_you_need --quiet-mode
If you wrap the cygwin install process, it should be tolerable for a less technical user.
The cygwin install can be streamlined using command-line args;
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin-apps/2003-03/msg00526.html
You can also automate the install of most cygwin packages through cyg-apt.
I haven't verified this but I suspect that msys implements a *nix look alike by creating windows executable versions of system commands. All of the common commands have an executable on my install of msys. If that is true then it should be possible to use them separate from a complete install.
Try copying "bash.exe", "cp.exe", etc. from the msys bin directory to a machine/vm that does not have an msys install and see if it works. You may need to copy some dll's or shared libraries as well. A windows dependency checker program would show which dll's an executable is using.
You could package up the stuff you use and make a simple installer or just copy the files with your scripts.
Take a look at MKS Toolkit. Unlike Cygwin, it can live within the Windows world. Files end in CR/LF like Windows files, and you don't have that /cygdrive/c stuff. Naked drive letters work fine in MKS Toolkit.
A few caveats:
I haven't used MKS Toolkit in a long time. See following reason.
MKS Toolkit is (sit down for this) $600 per license. Ouch! That's why I use Cygwin even though I don't think it's as good or works as well.
It's Kornshell based and not Bash (although this may be a bit different). Kornshell and BASH are 95% alike. However, that last 5% gets you. I actually like Kornshell better than BASH in many respects. Kornshell has the print statement which is way superior than the echo statement. Variable names don't disappear in blocks. You can easily do double loops because almost all the commands can take unit numbers of input and output. However, Kornshell doesn't have those neat escape characters in the prompt, and it's hard to find the exit status of a command in the middle of the pipeline.
On the rare occasion that I have to use a windows command prompt rather than bash, it drives me nuts that tab completion doesn't add a slash to the end of directory names. Is there a setting or script that I can run to force the full completion?
The answer these days is PowerShell. It is superset of the windows command line. It has many of the Linux commands. It has an object-based pipeline and has full access to the .NET framework from the command line.
And it adds a trailing slash when using tab to expand a directory name.
No there is no such setting. Your best bet is to use bash through cygwin but I expect you already knew that bit.
this is quite an old thread but I thought it might still be helpful for others.
I could not find a parameter in Windows to do the trick but I found a executable (GNU, with the Pyton source available) named PyCmd which is an improvement (according to my and my work habits) to regular CMD console.
It can be launched by double click it and it starts a regular console with cmd.exe and it loads itself in the memory to allow a lot of command line editing goodies, among them the same TAB completion behaviour I used to have under Unix Korn Shell (including the Emacs-like keys) with the trailing slashes or back-slaches for directories.
You can find it at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pycmd/
The last version is a December 2017 snapshot (but stable for me, could not meet any major trouble compared to the 2013 0.9 stable release), at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/pycmd/files/pycmd/snapshots/
You can also launch it from an existing console, from CMD.EXE and it starts a sub shell with all its editing goodies. You exit this sub-shell by exit or ^D on an empty line.
Note that I have tested it to under an alternative console like "Hyper" (MIT License, at https://hyper.is/ and https://github.com/zeit/hyper), which I prefer compared to Windows default console, and it works perfectly with it too. I think it's fair to assume that it will work well for other consoles like ConEmu or others, but I did not test it with them.
This answer goes perhaps a little far beyond the original question but -- I hope -- still can provide some help to people like me who like to get the same kind of command-line behaviour as they used to have under Unix Korn shell (possibly Linux bash, I don't know).
Have a nice command line interface to all!
GM
I have a lot of perl scripts that are on infinite loop running on my windows system. It is terribly inconvenient to have that many command prompts open not to mention the likelihood of closing them by mistake(strangely, they also seem to pause when I click on the prompt)
Is there someway I can handle this? Like maybe minimize this to the tray and maximize whenever necessary?
If it is of any use, I use activeperl
You can use Console2 utility, which is a Windows console window enhancement, it has a multiple tab feature.
Install GNU Screen. You can get it for Windows as part of Cygwin. You can then have multiple command line shells running in a single window, and can detach that window to run in the background.
Have you considered Win32::Daemon?