Back to Basics

cwahrle — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:07:16 +0000

I think that some of the time it is easy to forget about the basics. The basics of where scripting, automating, or coding began. That is why, in this multi part series of blogging, I will take a look at the basics of tools available from the Command Line, or batch files.

In this portion of my series, we will look at DIR, which is short for Directory.

Below is a summary of the options available from DIR:

Displays a list of files and subdirectories in a directory.

DIR [drive:][path][filename] [/A[[:]attributes]] [/B] [/C] [/D] [/L] [/N]

[/O[[:]sortorder]] [/P] [/Q] [/R] [/S] [/T[[:]timefield]] [/W] [/X] [/4]

[drive:][path][filename]

Specifies drive, directory, and/or files to list.

/A Displays files with specified attributes.

attributes D Directories R Read-only files

H Hidden files A Files ready for archiving

S System files I Not content indexed files

L Reparse Points – Prefix meaning not

/B Uses bare format (no heading information or summary).

/C Display the thousand separator in file sizes. This is the

default. Use /-C to disable display of separator.

/D Same as wide but files are list sorted by column.

/L Uses lowercase.

/N New long list format where filenames are on the far right.

/O List by files in sorted order.

sortorder N By name (alphabetic) S By size (smallest first)

E By extension (alphabetic) D By date/time (oldest first)

G Group directories first - Prefix to reverse order

/P Pauses after each screenful of information.

/Q Display the owner of the file.

/R Display alternate data streams of the file.

/S Displays files in specified directory and all subdirectories.

/T Controls which time field displayed or used for sorting

timefield C Creation

A Last Access

W Last Written

/W Uses wide list format.

/X This displays the short names generated for non-8dot3 file

names. The format is that of /N with the short name inserted

before the long name. If no short name is present, blanks are

displayed in its place.

/4 Displays four-digit years

Switches may be preset in the DIRCMD environment variable. Override

preset switches by prefixing any switch with – (hyphen)–for example, /-W.