I’m a big fan of the command line (much to the mirth of some of my co-workers). I do a lot of stuff through Git, Grunt and the like so I’ve usually got a Cmder window open somewhere.
When using Git, there are a bunch of commands that I use frequently so it’s handy to have a shortcut to these.
DOSKEY is a Windows utility that adds things like command history (via up and down arrows) and macro functionality for Windows XP and beyond (and 9 as well).
It’s the macro functionality that we’ll be looking at.
DOSKEY Usage
To add a macro (alias for you Linux types) using DOSKEY, the syntax is just:
doskey myshortcutcommand=my real command
So, if we wanted to use gp instead of git pull, the command would be:
doskey gp=git pull
Viewing Existing Macros
If you’re using Cmder, you’ll already have some macros set up. You can view these (and any you’ve added) using:
doskey /macros:all
Or, we can just add a macro to make it easier to remember:
doskey macros=doskey /macros:all
Passing Parameters
For some macros, we’ll want to pass parameters through from the macro to the original command. This is done using $*.
Let’s say we wanted to create an alias for git log so we could call things like gl -5. This would look like:
doskey gl=git log $*
Then we can call gl -5 to get the last 5 items.
Or, if we wanted to list commits in a custom format, we could do something like this:
doskey gl=git log --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h%Cblue%d %Creset%s%Cgreen [%cn, %ar]" $*
This format then produces output like this:
C:projectskwilson.me.uk (post-updates) λ gl -5 2581a75 New post. [Kevin Wilson, 3 weeks ago] f899823 Next batch of post updates. [Kevin Wilson, 3 weeks ago] 8a3e9cc Added short text summary support. [Kevin Wilson, 3 weeks ago] c235841 Updated heading font size hierarchy. [Kevin Wilson, 3 weeks ago] d548533 Mass replace of layouts. [Kevin Wilson, 4 weeks ago]
Deleting a Macro
If you decide you want to delete a macro, it’s simply a case of setting the macro name to equal nothing:
doskey someoldalias=
Launching Apps
The last thing that I tend to use this for is launching various apps as needed.
Sublime Text
doskey subl=subl="C:Program FilesSublime Text 3subl.exe" $*
allows you to use
subl somefile.txt
Notepad++
doskey np="C:Program Files (x86)Notepad++notepad++.exe" $*
allows you to use:
np somefile.txt
Explorer
doskey e.=explorer .
allows you to use:
e.
to launch an explorer window in the current directory.
Go Play
So go and create some macros and let me know about any good ones you come up with.
