Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2-1. Starting a program from the Run menu item
C:\>
cd c:\p
and then repeatedly press the completion key sequence, you'll see items beginning with
the letter “p” in the
C:\
directory. Note that Windows doesn't mind whether you use
uppercase or lowercase when referring to files and folders.
Quotes are added automatically around names with spaces—for example,
"C:\Program
Files"
. To continue expansion, press the backspace key to delete the last quote and
type a further hint. For example, to switch to the
C:\Program
Files\MySQL
directory,
you'd delete the quote, type a backslash (
\
), and then press the completion key sequence
again.
Pressing the up and down arrow keys will cycle through the command history. You can
see a list of recently used commands with the
doskey/history
command, as below:
C:\>
doskey/history
dir C:\
doskey/history
There are many more tweaks for the command prompt; just do a search on the Web
for “windows cmd”.
You can also start other programs from the Start menu; under XP, you would use the
Run menu item to browse to select the program you want. If you type in the command,
you'll also get command completion, as shown in Figure 2-1. Under Vista, simply type
the name of the program in the Start menu search box. However, this approach doesn't
always keep the results of running a program on the screen, so we suggest you use the
command-prompt window.
Using a Text Editor
As you read through this topic, you'll frequently find references to using a text editor.
This means a program that can edit and save files that contain only plain text. Word
