Is there a better Windows command-line shell? [closed]

Question

CMD.EXE is posing lots of problems for me. I have Cygwin installed and use bash regularly, and I also have the mingwin bash shell that comes with mSysGit, but sometimes I really do need to run things from the Windows shell.

Is there a replacement for the Windows shell that:

• has a persistent command-line history, available in my next session after I close a session? (as in bash HISTFILE)
• remembers what directory I was just in so that I can toggle between two directories? (as in bash cd -)

(Or is there a way to enable these features in CMD.EXE?)

I see some has asked about a better windows shell before, but they were asking about cut and paste which is lower in priority for me at this point. It's not the console that's killing me, it's the command-line interpreter.

Answer 1

Microsoft's just released Powershell. (about 2 years ago)

I've already downloaded it; didn't try it much, but seems a nice tool.

Answer 2

I've always liked 4NT (haven't used it for a while now).

It's an enhanced command interpreter for windows, and it's mostly backwards compatible (meaning you can run normal windows batchfiles). The only reason not to use it is that it doesn't ship with Windows like the default command.exe does.

Compared to the default windows commandline interpreter, it has better flow control mechanisms. All standard windows commandline tools are available, but with extra options and parameters.

Basically it's what CMD.exe should've been.

Update: looks like it's not called 4NT anymore, but TakeCommand: http://jpsoft.com/products.htm