Command Line Shortcuts

  • Article

Coming from a UNIX background, I'm a huge fan of keyboard and command line shortcuts. Anyone that has had the chance to stare over my shoulder when I'm working may have noticed:

  • I live in multiple command line windows. I didn't grow up with Windows Explorer (a.k.a. Program Manager in days gone by) and just find it easier <g>.
  • I have Windows Services for Unix (SFU) installed just so that I have access to grep, awk, sed, ps and other tools on the Windows platform.
  • I like SlickRun and Dave's Quick Search Bar. Who can't resist one line macros for searching on google or opening multiple windows without touching the mouse?
  • Junction (a UNIX mount style tool from SysInternals) is my friend

After reading Jason Wittington's blog yesterday (through Scott's blog), I have to add another one to the list. Jason blogs about a simple, but great tool to cat the contents of a text file to the clipboard. For example, using this from the command line:

c:\type myfile.xml | clipboard

This is especially useful (as before, I would have had to open this up in an editor, CTRL-A, CTRL-C, ALT-Tab to my other application and CTRL-V).

Go check out the one line of code behind this in his post.