Tools

This repo is a random collection of command-line tools and batch files that I've written over the years. Most of them were written years ago, and I'm just getting around to uploading them. Many are outdated and no longer useful, but collected here for posterity.

Batch-file helpers

• _parse-parameters.cmd is a helper script to parse your batch-file's command-line. See documentation.
• _show-usage.cmd is a helper script to print "usage" info for your batch files. See documentation.
• _fuzzy-match.cmd is a helper script to perform fuzzy file/path matching. See documentation.

Console-color stuff

This stuff is mostly outdated; in Win10, prefer using ANSI escape sequences (especially since Terminal now supports XTPUSHSGR/XTPOPSGR).

Might still be useful if you regularly support older versions of Windows. And even on modern Windows, running tcolor /ansi /table is a good way to visualize the standard ANSI colors available.

• tcolor.cpp: changes the Windows console colors; like the built-in color command, but only for new text.
• echoc.bat: echos a line of text in the specified color (uses tcolor.cpp).
• pushcolor.cmd and popcolor.cmd implement a text-color "stack", based on tcolor.cpp.

Misc

• fcd.cmd is a "fuzzy" replacement for cd/pushd. Uses _fuzzy-match.cmd.
• console-icon.cpp is a small program to change the icon for the current console session.
  • Also included are a few colorized versions of the (Vista-era) console icons 0b.ico, 1b.ico, and 5b.ico.
  • When I had lots of command-prompt windows, colorizing their icons helped me distinguish them on the task-bar and when alt-tabbing.
  • No longer works in Win10... so mainly of historical interest.
• hash.pl is a simple perl script that generates MD5 hashes for a file or recursively on a directory.
• tidy.xslt is an XML pretty-printer written in XSLT.
  • Requires an XSLT processor; was written and tested against MSXML6.
• timeit.bat is a script that measures the time taken by a command.
  • Still works, with caveats like needing to prepend with cmd /c call if your target is a batch-file, and obscure escaping rules if your command includes pipe/redirection characters.
• mt/* is a set of scripts that does a 3-way merge/compare against a set of loose files.
  • This was written when I had to regularly do complicated merges against SourceSafe repositories.
  • Of limited interest with a modern source-control system (i.e., just about anything other than SourceSafe).

License (MIT)

Copyright © 2010-2023 Ian Prest

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.