Create environment-wide shortcuts on Windows to run commands directly within the context of a chosen directory. Uses the PATH environment variable to add pipe commands that act as shortcuts to a directory of choice.
The executable is portable and requires no administrative privileges. Shortcuts are stored within the AppData directory to make them persistent.
The etc shortcut is mapped to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
We can now run commands like this: etc <command> <arguments>.
Example output for etc dir:
C:\Users\Yani>etc dir
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 1234-5678
Directory of C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc
23-May-18 05:10 <DIR> .
23-May-18 05:10 <DIR> ..
30-Dec-17 02:11 2,464 hosts
12-Apr-18 01:36 3,683 lmhosts.sam
16-Jul-16 13:45 407 networks
16-Jul-16 13:45 1,358 protocol
16-Jul-16 13:45 17,463 services
5 File(s) 25,375 bytes
2 Dir(s) 15,289,909,248 bytes free
The application is just a front-end for managing shortcut .bat files. When it's first ran, a directory in appdata is created and its path is added to the PATH environment variable.
Now when you run a command in your console, the new directory is checked for executable files.
Because our shortcuts are saved as <shortcut>.bat, the shortcut acts as an executable and uses
all other arguments as a new command in the directory the shortcut points to.
The shortcut file that is created looks like this:
@echo off
SET org_dir=%cd%
cd /d "<project-directory>"
%*
cd /d "%org_dir%\"
https://github.com/yani/ShortPATH/releases
This software is licensed under the MIT license.