Review: Take Command 14 command line utility is easier to use than PowerShell - rhodescapassicer

At a Glance

Practiced's Military rank

Pros

Contains an editor in chief and debugger for batch scripts
Builds on existing commands so you can bulge exploitation it right away
Supports multiple control processors, so you can buoy have do and cmd.exe tabs

Cons

Expensive
The trial interpretation shows very frequent scold messages

Our Finding of fact

For serious work in the console, hardly a utilities (if any) tin can match the prowess of Take Command. Information technology's not cheap, but for command phone line jockeys, the savings in time and errors are worth the price.

Serious geeks spend a lot of fourth dimension at the statement course. But Windows' antique statement line doesn't even resize properly, and information technology takes a mouse require to glue into (hitting Ctrl+V will antimonopoly result in ^V being printed). Microsoft's answer to this is PowerShell, an alternative command processor bundled with Windows from XP SP2 to Windows 8. PowerShell can do lots of things, and its default console application is an improvement, too, because you hind end resize it—but you silent can't select school tex victimization the keyboard, paste with Ctrl+V, or even resize its font quickly. Plus, the PowerShell bid processor itself is non light to learn, and you may have to adjust your computer's security settings to be able to utilization it. Take Command 14 is a $100 utility (30-Day sovereign tribulation) that proves the Windows overtop line really doesn't have to feel this ancient or be this complex.

Take Command takes a sinewy yet simple command processor and marries information technology with a attractively modern interface, for a result that leaves the default Windows interface eld behind. The command processor, TCC, is a superset of the one built into Windows. Sol, dir is still dir, and del is still del, and everything you already know about working in the command line is still valid. But there are lots of extra commands, and even the existing commands get switches in TCC their cmd.exe counterparts can sole dream of. This means that, the likes of VBScript and AutoHotkey, TCC is a speech you can gradually grow into; you can part with with simple things, and you probably already know several of it.

Bundled with Microsoft Office, VBA lets you show macros and then customize them to do scarce more or less anything Office-related.

Arsenic for the console interface: It's cooked to the letter. The window is tabbed, thusly you lav have five-fold cabinet Sessions concurrently. Hitting Agitate and the arrow keys selects text. Hitting Ctrl+V pastes text into the console (amazing, I know!). There's an integrated file manager letting you see the impact of your actions on the file system in concrete-clip. And when you're comfortable with the language and smel ready to pen some batch scripts, you'll discover the best part: A well-stacked-in coder's editor in chief with a line-sideline debugger.

Take Command is expensive, only if you find yourself spending lots of time in the prompt or having to manually figure out wherefore batch files are breaking, it's a great investment.

Note: The "Essa it for free" push button on the Product Information pageboy wish download the software package to your system.

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Without end tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to find the simplest, coolest, and all but effective software and websites to make tomorrow pass now.