1. What is PyCmd?
-----------------
PyCmd is a smart command prompt extension for Windows' cmd.exe; its purpose is
to emulate a few power features of UNIX shells (decent Tab-completion,
persistent history, etc.)
[Experimental] PyCmd now also runs on Linux, acting as a front-end for bash
2. What are some important features?
------------------------------------
a. Tab completion
- when several completions are possible, list them (plain/bash- or
interactive/zsh-style)
- insert/remove quotes as needed
- complete executables from the PATH and internal CMD.exe commands
- complete names of environment variables, including pseudo-variables
- complete wildcards
- expand values of environment variables when completing
- support both '/' and '\' as path separators
b. Command suggestions
- automatically suggest commands from history or from available
completions:
- accept with Right/End
- accept partially with "forward-word" (Ctrl-Right etc.)
- accept & run with Ctrl-Enter
b. Command history
- the history is persistent across PyCmd sessions
- direct history search (type a few filter characters/words, then Up/Down)
- incremental history search (Ctrl-R)
- remove command from history (Ctrl-Alt-K)
- history ordering is more intuitive than cmd's default strategy
c. Command editing
- support emacs key bindings
- Copy-Paste using the keyboard (Ctrl-C/X/V or Emacs-style)
- Undo/Redo with Ctrl-[Shift-]Z (regular style) or Ctrl-_ (Emacs-style)
- dynamic, context-sensitive token expansion with Alt-/ (Emacs-style)
- search string ([Shift-]F3)
- smart word-by-word navigation
- lexical selection (Shift-Up/Down)
d. Navigation
- history of recently visited directories (Alt-Left/Right/D on empty line)
- cd to parent (Alt-Up)
e. Other
- smart prompt:
- highlighted for readability
- abbreviates path to save space
- displays git and svn status
- displays ERRORLEVEL (if > 0)
- customizable
- configuration file (init.py) for customizing colors, prompt etc.
- Shift-PgUp/PgDn to scroll the buffer
- expand/abbreviate ~ as %HOME% or %USERPROFILE%
- Ctrl-D on an empty line closes PyCmd
- show the current working directory in the window title
3. Known problems
-----------------
- when DelayedExpansion is disabled (PyCmd.exe /V:OFF), %ERRORLEVEL% is not
properly processed
- DOSKEY macros are not supported
- can NOT be used to fully replace cmd.exe as default shell (e.g. via
%COMSPEC%)
4. Future plans
---------------
- custom TAB-completion for the arguments of common commands
- clean-up the mechanism that dispatches commands to cmd.exe (currently kind
of hacky)
5. How do I download/install/run it?
------------------------------------
a. Download a binary distribution (created with cx_freeze, see
https://pypi.org/project/cx-Freeze/) from
https://github.com/horeah/PyCmd/releases
Then, unpack and start PyCmd.exe. No installation is necessary.
b. Clone the repository, then:
(1) `python run_tests.py` to run tests
(2) `python PyCmd.py` to start the application
You will need:
- Python 3.10+ from http://www.python.org/download/
- The pywin32 package (pip install pywin32)
- The pefile package (pip install pefile)
(3) `make` to to build a binary distribution
You will also need:
- cx_freeze (pip install cx_freeze)
- MinGW from http://www.mingw.org/
6. How do I report a crash/problem?
-----------------------------------
For bugs or feature requests, please use the bug tracker provided by GitHub
at https://github.com/horeah/PyCmd/issues
When reporting crashes, please try to locate and attach a crash log (look in
%APPDATA%\PyCmd for files named crash-yyyymmdd_hhmmss.log).
7. Credits
----------
- The fish shell is an endless source of good ideas:
https://fishshell.com/
- fsm.py is a nice package for implementing a Finite State Machine:
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/146262
---------------------------------------------------
Horea Haitonic (h o r e a h _at_ g m a i l . c o m)