Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
The Windows Command Prompt
Under Windows, you can open a command-prompt window by clicking on the Com-
mand Prompt entry under the Accessories submenu. You can also type
cmd
in the Start
menu search box (Vista) or in the Start menu “Run...” field (XP).
The command prompt typically shows you the current working disk and directory:
C:\Documents and Settings\Adam>
In this example, the current working directory is the home directory
\Documents
and
Settings\Adam
on the
C:
disk. Under Vista, the location of the home directory is slightly
different:
C:\Users\Adam>
From the command prompt, you can run many useful commands; we'll see some as
we progress through this topic. Two standard commands that are important to know
for this topic are:
cd
Changes your working folder or directory on disk.
dir
Lists the files and directories in your working folder.
Together, the
cd
and
dir
commands are the text equivalent of using a graphical file
manager such as Windows Explorer to go to different directories and view their
contents.
Windows uses the variable
%HOMEPATH%
to refer to your home directory, so you can
always change to your home directory by typing:
C:\>
cd %HOMEPATH%
C:\Documents and Settings\Adam>
Command completion and history
Command completion is a feature that can save you a lot of typing. When you start to
type the name of a command, file, or directory, pressing the completion key sequence
cycles through matches. The completion key varies between systems; it is generally the
Tab key or the Ctrl-D or Ctrl-F key combination.
Under Windows, you can activate the command-completion feature if you start the
command prompt with the
/f:on
option (command completion is active by default in
Vista). If the
/f:on
switch doesn't work on your system, try calling the
cmd
program
without the switch. You can also configure Windows XP to have command completion
active by default, but we won't describe how to do this here.
The best way to understand command completion is to try it out. For example, when
you type
cd
c:\p
:
