Command Line Tools

Question

I've been having a look through other questions on the site and can't find one listing out some of the most widely used (or subjectively best) command line tools.

Having just installed Mercurial I'm interested in what command line tools others are using.

So what command line tools do you use and which ones do you prefer? Some reasons for why you use them and what makes it such a great tool would be really useful.

I'm currently on Windows so suggestions for Windows based command line tools would be a great help.

UPDATE:

What I'm really looking for is some software to replace the built in cmd.exe in Windows. There are lots of ways we can use this software however I'm really just interested in what replacement tools people are using. I find cmd.exe quite hard to work in and am looking for a good alternative.

UPDATE 2:

So it turns out that my wording has been slightly off. The thing I'm really asking about is a Shell or Command Interpreter. Thanks to everyone who's answered. Very helpful responses.

Answer 1

I believe your question is too general. The command-line is just a type of interface that can be used for all kinds of applications.

Thus your question is similar to the question: What applications do you prefer?

Any answer to this will be too subjective and not very helpful. Maybe you should ask what tools people use to achieve a specific goal?

EDIT:

I better understand the misunderstanding now: CMD is usually NOT called a command line tool. It is a command interpreter. What you were searching for was a better command interpreter.

A command line tool is any application that uses the console as an interface.

Answer 2

Command line git seems to be much more reliable (and IMO) easier to use than the various graphical interfaces that are available for it. It's also way more flexible from the command line.

Answer 3

Some that I use quite often :

iisreset : When my IIS drives me crazy.

appcmd : To script IIS stuff

robocopy : Because it is usefully more verbose than the basic copy

subst : When i have horribly long paths

net use : To map shares in a blink of an eye

Answer 4

I use rsync all the time - it's particularly useful when you need to build and test on different platforms, and when you need to sync with remote file systems over slow links.

Answer 5

Answering the updated question -

If you don't like the batch language of cmd.exe a good replacement would be python.

As for proper command line tools for windows, there are various "unix tools" packages which offer most of the core unix command line utilities. They are most useful for basic text processing when you need to extract something from a huge log file for instance.

Answer 6

If I understand you correctly check out Take Command/LE :

http://www.jpsoft.com/tcmdledes.htm

or you should try Windows PowerShell :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_PowerShell

Answer 7

Perhaps what you are talking about is a shell, which is the program that gives you a prompt, lets you enter commands and execute them, and carry out simple programming-like operations like manipulating arguments, substitution, and iteration. CMD.EXE is the built-in shell for Windows.

Cygwin is a package which provides a Unix-style shell ("bash") on Windows. It's mainly intended to support a Unix-style environment (with Unix-style directories, etc.), but can be used to run Windows programs as well. "bash" is far more powerful than CMD.EXE. Pretty much any Unix-accustomed user who's using Windows has installed Cygwin.

Newer versions of Windows have a newer shell called PowerShell; I've never used it but I can only assume it's a improvement over CMD.EXE.

Your latest comment says that "Console2" is what you wanted, but judging from the project page it appears to be just a console, which is just the window program that the shell runs in (granted with features such as easier cut-and-paste, and configurable appearance). You're still probably running CMD.EXE by default in it though.

Answer 8

I believe Windows PowerShell is the best option to go with.

Also, have a look here for bunch of useful scripts: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/scriptcenter/powershell.aspx

Answer 9

I use UnxUtils on Win platform. These tools are Unix tools recompiled for the Windows environment.

It give you many Unix type tools (grep, sed, join etc), without the overhead of installing a whole environment.

It hasn't been updated for a while, but it works well for me.