What’s wrong with CMD and the Windows Command Prompt?
- CMD in Windows 10 has about 40 internal commands. That’s only a couple more than CMD had in Windows NT 3.1 25 years ago.
- CMD has (almost) no configuration options. There are a handful of switches you can specify on the startup line, and that’s it.
- There’s no way to create plugins to extend CMD; your only choice is writing new external apps.
- CMD can set its foreground and background colors, and … nothing else. No syntax coloring, different colors for input and output, errors, colorized directories.
- Command line editing in CMD is (extremely) simplistic.
- Filename completion is crude and non-programmable.
- Variables in CMD consist of the environment variables and a total of 6 internal variables. All of those internal CMD and Windows settings you’d like to query? Not from CMD.
- File viewing is limited to TYPE. If you want to display a page at a time, pipe to MORE. Want to go back a page, search, scroll up and down? You can’t.
- Aliases? Sort of. Just don’t try anything other than the most basic command alias.
- 25+ years into the Internet era, and CMD’s Internet-capable commands consist of … nothing. No HTTP or FTP file access for internal commands. No SSL or SSH, and no SMTP.
- Help is nearly non-existent. There is a paragraph or two of text output when you enter the command name followed by a /?. Want to see the command syntax while you’re constructing a command line or writing a batch file? Help on redirection, command line parsing, regular expressions, or batch file creation? Forget it.
- Creating, editing, and debugging batch files is a demanding task and needs an integrated solution. What is Microsoft’s solution? Edit the batch file in Notepad, run it on the command line, and see what happens.
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For more than 30 years, JP Software has been helping programmers, system administrators, technical support professionals, and advanced users save time and solve their command prompt frustrations. Take Command offers a new approach to working with Windows command line applications, bringing users the power of the command line and the ease of use of the GUI.