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Part of my writing on hobby videogame development

Navigating via Command-Line: DOS Prompt for Windows


To launch: run "cmd" or search for cmd.exe

Context via the traditional Windows file browser of the example files and directories:









Examples of how to navigate and view those directories with the command-line:



Windows DOS Prompt Notes:

C:

Pronounced "C Drive", which by convention is the letter assigned to the primary hard drive.

C:\TestDir\folderInIt>

The folder in focus and its path are spelled out as part of the prompt.

dir

Short for directory. Type this to show the files and folders within the directory currently in focus.

dir /w

The "slash w" on the end tells the "dir" call to use wide format, leaving out sizes/dates to show more files.

cd

Short for Change Directory. Needs to be told which directory to change to.

cd folderInIt

Change Directory to "folderInIt". Because there is no "\" in front of the directory name ("folderInIt", not "\folderInIt") it will look only within the folder currently in focus - we'll need the directory in focus to be TestDir for this command to work.

cd ..

Change Directory to parent directory; change focus to the folder containing the folder currently in focus ("go up one").

Common variations not shown in the example above:

cd\

Change Directory to root directory ("go directly to C:\").

cd\TestDir\folderInIt

Change Directory to C:TestDir\folderInIt, no matter no matter which folder is currently in focus.

Other notes:

Unlike Linux/Mac, DOS Prompt is not case sensitive. Typing "cd folderInIt" will work the same as "cd FOLDErinit".

Note: DOS uses the "\" slash everywhere. This is not the same slash that is used for website addresses. Many versions of DOS will forgive making this mistake, assuming the proper slash anywhere that the wrong one is used, but relative paths in compiled code may be less forgiving of making this mistake.

Pressing the [tab] key on most newer versions of Windows/DOSPrompt will auto-complete the filename or foldername currently being typed in. "cd fo[tab key]" will autofill into "cd folderInIt" if the current directory is TestDir, since there's only 1 folder/file in the directory that begins with "fo".

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