Tool for commandline "bookmarks" on windows?

Question

Im searching a tool which allows me to specify some folders as "bookmarks" and than access them on the commandline (on Windows XP) via a keyword. Something like:

C:\> go home
D:\profiles\user\home\> go svn-project1
D:\projects\project1\svn\branch\src\>

I'm currently using a bunch of batch files, but editing them by hand is a daunting task. On Linux there is cdargs or shell bookmarks but I haven't found something on windows.

---

Thanks for the Powershell suggestion, but I'm not allowed to install it on my box at work, so it should be a "classic" cmd.exe solution.

Answer 1

What you are looking for is called DOSKEY

You can use the doskey command to create macros in the command interpreter. For example:

doskey mcd=mkdir "$*"$Tpushd "$*"

creates a new command "mcd" that creates a new directory and then changes to that directory (I prefer "pushd" to "cd" in this case because it lets me use "popd" later to go back to where I was before)

The $* will be replaced with the remainder of the command line after the macro, and the $T is used to delimit the two different commands that I want to evaluate. If I typed:

mcd foo/bar 

at the command line, it would be equivalent to:

mkdir "foo/bar"&pushd "foo/bar"

The next step is to create a file that contains a set of macros which you can then import by using the /macrofile switch. I have a file (c:\tools\doskey.macros) which defines the commands that I regularly use. Each macro should be specified on a line with the same syntax as above.

But you don't want to have to manually import your macros every time you launch a new command interpreter, to make it happen automatically, just open up the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun and set the value to be doskey /macrofile "c:\tools\doskey.macro". Doing this will make sure that your macros are automatically predefined every time you start a new interpreter.

Extra thoughts: - If you want to do other things in AutoRun (like set environment parameters), you can delimit the commands with the ampersand. Mine looks like: set root=c:\SomeDir&doskey /macrofile "c:\tools\doskey.macros" - If you prefer that your AutoRun settings be set per-user, you can use the HKCU node instead of HKLM. - You can also use doskey to control things like the size of the command history. - I like to end all of my navigation macros with \$* so that I can chain things together - Be careful to add quotes as appropriate in your macros if you want to be able to handle paths with spaces in them.

Answer 2

I was looking for this exact functionality, for simple cases. Couldn't find a solution, so I made one myself:

@ECHO OFF
REM Source found on https://github.com/DieterDePaepe/windows-scripts
REM Please share any improvements made!

REM Folder where all links will end up
set WARP_REPO=%USERPROFILE%\.warp

IF [%1]==[/?] GOTO :help
IF [%1]==[--help] GOTO :help
IF [%1]==[/create] GOTO :create
IF [%1]==[/remove] GOTO :remove
IF [%1]==[/list] GOTO :list

set /p WARP_DIR=<%WARP_REPO%\%1
cd %WARP_DIR%
GOTO :end

:create
IF [%2]==[] (
  ECHO Missing name for bookmark
  GOTO :EOF
)

if not exist %WARP_REPO%\NUL mkdir %WARP_REPO%
ECHO %cd% > %WARP_REPO%\%2
ECHO Created bookmark "%2"
GOTO :end

:list
dir %WARP_REPO% /B
GOTO :end

:remove
IF [%2]==[] (
  ECHO Missing name for bookmark
  GOTO :EOF
)
if not exist %WARP_REPO%\%2 (
  ECHO Bookmark does not exist: %2
  GOTO :EOF
)
del %WARP_REPO%\%2
GOTO :end

:help
ECHO Create or navigate to folder bookmarks.
ECHO.
ECHO   warp /?          Display this help
ECHO   warp [bookmark]      Navigate to existing bookmark
ECHO   warp /remove [bookmark]  Remove an existing bookmark
ECHO   warp /create [bookmark]  Navigate to existing bookmark
ECHO   warp /list           List existing bookmarks
ECHO.

:end

You can list, create and delete bookmarks. The bookmarks are stored in text files in a folder in your user directory.

Usage (copied from current version):

A folder bookmarker for use in the terminal.

c:\Temp>warp /create temp     # Create a new bookmark
Created bookmark "temp"
c:\Temp>cd c:\Users\Public    # Go somewhere else
c:\Users\Public>warp temp     # Go to the stored bookmark
c:\Temp>

Every warp uses a pushd command, so you can trace back your steps using popd.

c:\Users\Public>warp temp
c:\Temp>popd
c:\Users\Public>

Open a folder of a bookmark in explorer using warp /window <bookmark>.

List all available options using warp /?.