When working on a computer running Windows offline (without an Internet connection), is it possible to get/generate a list of available cmd commands (including usage) through command-line?
05 Answers
For a list of commands:
helpAnd for details about a specific command:
help <command>or
<command> /?For example:
help xcopy
xcopy /?You can find an official list at Microsoft Command-line reference A-Z. Besides that...
To answer your question directly, I devised a script that simply lists all .exe files that you can execute (because they're located on your PATH). By default, it only lists those that also reside in %WINDIR% (unless you run it with --all).
In a previous iteration of the script, I started every command with /?, which is a very bad idea. Not every application on the PATH understands that parameter. Some will simply start and remain running, instead of printing any help. So that eats up a lot of resources rather quickly.
@SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS
@ECHO OFF
IF "%1"=="--all" ( SET LIST_ALL=TRUE
)
CALL :printPath "%PATH%"
:printPath
FOR /F "tokens=1,* delims=;" %%A IN ("%~1") DO ( IF EXIST "%%A" ( PUSHD "%%A" FOR %%F IN (*.exe) DO ( ECHO.%%~dnpfF | FINDSTR /C:"%WINDIR%" 1> NUL IF ERRORLEVEL 1 ( IF "%LIST_ALL%"=="TRUE" ECHO.%%~dnpfF ) ELSE ( ECHO.%%~dnpfF ) ) POPD ) ELSE ( REM ECHO Skipping non-existent folder '%%A' ) CALL :printPath "%%~B"
)
ENDLOCALSo, there. This gives you a list of all available commands and their parameters. As you can already expect, it's not as useful as one might imagine.
Here's what's really important!
More interesting than the .exe files on your PATH are the cmd.exe built-ins. Like IF, FOR and SET. I don't have a complete list of the built-ins, but you can see most of them by running cmd.exe /?:
DEL or ERASE
COLOR
CD or CHDIR
MD or MKDIR
PROMPT
PUSHD
POPD
SET
SETLOCAL
ENDLOCAL
IF
FOR
CALL
SHIFT
GOTO
START (also includes changes to external command invocation)
ASSOC
FTYPEThough, at that point the help is referencing command extensions, so the list may be incomplete. Let's take a closer look at some built-ins:
FOR /?
The documentation for the FOR command lists all the crazy parameters you can pass to FOR. This is the go-to utility if you want to write anything related to loops.
This documentation also contains the explanation for the crazy "tilde notation":
In addition, substitution of FOR variable references has been enhanced
You can now use the following optional syntax: %~I - expands %I removing any surrounding quotes (") %~fI - expands %I to a fully qualified path name %~dI - expands %I to a drive letter only %~pI - expands %I to a path only %~nI - expands %I to a file name only %~xI - expands %I to a file extension only %~sI - expanded path contains short names only %~aI - expands %I to file attributes of file %~tI - expands %I to date/time of file %~zI - expands %I to size of file %~$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH environment variable and expands %I to the fully qualified name of the first one found. If the environment variable name is not defined or the file is not found by the search, then this modifier expands to the empty string
The modifiers can be combined to get compound results: %~dpI - expands %I to a drive letter and path only %~nxI - expands %I to a file name and extension only %~fsI - expands %I to a full path name with short names only %~dp$PATH:I - searches the directories listed in the PATH environment variable for %I and expands to the drive letter and path of the first one found. %~ftzaI - expands %I to a DIR like output lineIF /?
IF is the command for branching. You'll need this page because it lists the comparison operators:
If Command Extensions are enabled IF changes as follows: IF [/I] string1 compare-op string2 command IF CMDEXTVERSION number command IF DEFINED variable command
where compare-op may be one of: EQU - equal NEQ - not equal LSS - less than LEQ - less than or equal GTR - greater than GEQ - greater than or equalSET /?
SET allows you to perform a wide variety of operations on variables.
The /A switch specifies that the string to the right of the equal sign
is a numerical expression that is evaluated. The expression evaluator
is pretty simple and supports the following operations, in decreasing
order of precedence: () - grouping ! ~ - - unary operators * / % - arithmetic operators + - - arithmetic operators << >> - logical shift & - bitwise and ^ - bitwise exclusive or | - bitwise or = *= /= %= += -= - assignment &= ^= |= <<= >>= , - expression separatorIt also allows for string manipulation through the above mentioned "tilde notation"
7There's batch script available at dostips.com (CreateDosCommandIndex.bat) which generates an html file containing the complete list of available dos commands on the system, along with their respective output generated through "commandname /?"
I'm reporting it below since dostips.com seems to have db load related problems at this time and their website works intermittently.
@ECHO OFF
REM.-- Prepare the Command Processor
SETLOCAL ENABLEEXTENSIONS
REM --
REM -- Copyright note
REM -- This script is provided as is. No waranty is made, whatso ever.
REM -- You may use and modify the script as you like, but keep the version history with
REM -- recognition to in it.
REM --
REM Version History:
REM XX.XXX YYYYMMDD Author Description
SET "version=01.000" &:20051201 p.h. initial version, origin
SET "version=01.001" &:20060122 p.h. Fix missing exclamation marks in documentation ()
SET "version=01.002" &:20060218 p.h. replaced TEXTAREA with PRE XMP ()
SET "version=01.003" &:20060218 p.h. php embedding ()
SET "version=01.004" &:20060723 p.h. fix page links for FireFox ()
SET "version=01.005" &:20061015 p.h. invoke HELP via '"call" help', allows overriding help command with a help.bat file ()
SET "version=01.006" &:20061015 p.h. cleanup progress indicator ()
SET "version=01.007" &:20080316 p.h. use codepage 1252 to support european users ()
SET "version=02.000" &:20080316 p.h. use FOR command to generate HTML, avoids most escape characters ()
SET "version=02.000" &:20100201 p.h. now using css and xhtml
REM !! For a new version entry, copy the last entry down and modify Date, Author and Description
SET "version=%version: =%"
for /f "delims=: tokens=2" %%a in ('chcp') do set "restore_codepage=%%a"
chcp 1252>NUL
set "z=%~dpn0.htm"
rem echo.^<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"^> >"%z%"
echo.^<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" ""^> >"%z%"
set "title=DOS Command Index"
for /f "tokens=*" %%a in ('ver') do set "winver=%%a"
echo.Creating the header ...
for %%A in ( "<html lang='en-US' xml:lang='en-US' xmlns='" "<head>" "<style type='text/css'>" " h1 {text-align:center;}" " h2 {text-align:center;}" " table.center {margin-left: auto;margin-right: auto;}" " td {text-align:left;}" " div.center {text-align:center;}" " div.sourcebatch {background: #DDDDDD;}" " div.helptext {background: #F8F8FF;}" " div.top {float: right;}" "</style>" "<title>%title%</title>" "<meta http-equiv='Content-Type' content='text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1' />" "</head>" "<body bgcolor='#FFFFCC'>" "<font color='darkblue'>" "<h1>%title%</h1>" "<div class='center'>" "<table class='center' border='1' cellspacing='1' cellpadding='3'>" " <tr><td>Windows Version</td><td>:</td><td>%winver%</td></tr>" " <tr><td>Document Source</td><td>:</td><td>" " <a href=' />" " <a href='" " </td></tr>" " <tr><td>Created by</td><td>:</td><td><a href='" " <b>%~nx0</b></a><br /><a href='#%~n0'><b>Source Code below</b></a></td></tr>" "</table>" "</div>" "<br /><br />" "<table class='center'>" ) do echo.%%~A>>"%z%"
echo.Creating the index ...
set /a cnt=0
for /f "tokens=1,*" %%a in ('"help|findstr /v /b /c:" " /c:"For more""') do ( for %%A in ( " <tr><td><a href='#%%a'>%%a</a></td><td>%%b</td></tr>" ) do echo.%%~A>>"%z%" set /a cnt+=1
)
for %%A in ( "</table>" "<br /><br />" ) do echo.%%~A>>"%z%"
echo.Extracting HELP text ...
call:initProgress cnt
for /f %%a in ('"help|findstr /v /b /c:" " /c:"For more""') do ( echo.Processing %%a for %%A in ( "<div class='top'><a href='#'>TOP</a></div>" "<h2><a name='%%a'>%%a</a></h2>" "<div class='helptext'><pre><xmp>" ) do echo.%%~A>>"%z%" call help %%a >>"%z%" 2>&1 echo ^</xmp^> >>"%z%" for %%A in ( "</pre></div>" ) do echo.%%~A>>"%z%" call:tickProgress
)
echo.Injecting source script ...
for %%A in ( "" "<br /><br />" "<div class='center'>" "<div class='top'><a href='#'>TOP</a></div>" "<a name='%~n0'><h2>DOS Batch Script Source that created this Document</h2></a>" "This %title% has been created automatically by the following DOS batch script:" "<br /><br />" "</div>" "<div class='sourcebatch'><pre><xmp>" ) do echo.%%~A>>"%z%"
type "%~f0" >>"%z%"
echo.Creating the footer ...
echo ^</xmp^> >>"%z%"
for %%A in ( "</pre></div>" "" "</font>" "</body>" "</html>" ) do echo.%%~A>>"%z%"
chcp %restore_codepage%>NUL
explorer "%z%"
:SKIP
REM.-- End of application
FOR /l %%a in (5,-1,1) do (TITLE %title% -- closing in %%as&ping -n 2 -w 1 127.0.0.1>NUL)
TITLE Press any key to close the application&ECHO.&GOTO:EOF
::-----------------------------------------------------------
::helper functions follow below here
::-----------------------------------------------------------
:initProgress -- initialize an internal progress counter and display the progress in percent
:: -- %~1: in - progress counter maximum, equal to 100 percent
:: -- %~2: in - title string formatter, default is '[P] completed.'
set /a "ProgressCnt=-1"
set /a "ProgressMax=%~1"
set "ProgressFormat=%~2"
if "%ProgressFormat%"=="" set "ProgressFormat=[PPPP]"
set "ProgressFormat=%ProgressFormat:[PPPP]=[P] completed.%"
call :tickProgress
GOTO:EOF
:tickProgress -- display the next progress tick
set /a "ProgressCnt+=1"
SETLOCAL
set /a "per=100*ProgressCnt/ProgressMax"
set "per=%per%%%"
call title %%ProgressFormat:[P]=%per%%%
GOTO:EOFIt is not exactly what you are looking for a offline solution (you need you internet connection to open the webpage), but is a very useful tool and reference for cmd commands:
An A-Z Index of the Windows CMD command line.
2I know it is not exactly what you are asking for, but you may want to start learning Powershell instead of the command prompt. Microsoft is trying to phase out the command prompt for Powershell so it would be a good skill to learn.
If you are in Powershell the command Get-Command will list all commands that can currently be run from all loaded modules. It will produce a output that looks like this:
CommandType Name Definition
----------- ---- ----------
Cmdlet Add-Content Add-Content [-Path] <String[...
Cmdlet Add-History Add-History [[-InputObject] ...
Cmdlet Add-Member Add-Member [-MemberType] <PS...
Cmdlet Add-PSSnapin Add-PSSnapin [-Name] <String...
Cmdlet Clear-Content Clear-Content [-Path] <Strin...
