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I can't stand the Windows command "shell" and console window. I can't copy text off a command prompt window, the .bat syntax is stupid, I can't stand how the command buffer works, it doesn't support ANSI color codes, I could go on and on.

Are there any alternatives to the Windows command prompt?

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see mingw.org for the MSYS implementation of bash, which does what you want. Unfortunately, the MinGW/MSYS web site is designed and written by cretins, but with a bit of effort you should be able to install it. – nb2580 Dec 24 '09 at 20:32
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The attitude of the question isn't helping anything. Please tone it down. – Sasha Chedygov Dec 24 '09 at 21:23
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The "shell" (cmd.exe) and the "console" (Windows Console) are separate things. – grawity Dec 25 '09 at 10:19
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@musicfreak, the attitude of your comment isn't helping anything. Please tone it down. – user17943 Dec 26 '09 at 21:30
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@Synetech inc.: COMMAND.COM wouldn't work on 64-bit or Windows 7. (Perhaps surprisingly, it would work on e.g. PowerPC. I guess MS figured that most people were unaware of the non-native NTVDM, and would therefore believe it to be totally impractical to support NTVDM on 64-bit Windows...) – SamB Jun 3 '10 at 20:05
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13 Answers

up vote 23 down vote accepted

I use Console, an open source command line shell that takes care of most of cmd.exe's issues and adds new features such as tabs and transparency. As for the batch syntax, you can set it up to use PowerShell as the backend instead of cmd.exe.

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Works oh so smoothly. Looks like it redraws the screen more times per second too. Unfortunately I can't see my colors, I only see the ansi codes themselves being written literally to the screen... – user17943 Dec 26 '09 at 21:38
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I use Console and instead cmd.exe I use the MinGW that comes with Git. Combined is the best solution I've tried so far. Console enables mouse selection on the terminal and MinGW enables the *nix style autocompletition. – antitoxic Mar 24 at 16:49
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up vote 18 down vote

Windows PowerShell.

User brianary adds:
Be sure you go to your command prompt → system menu (Alt+Space) → Defaults → Options → and check QuickEdit Mode, which makes the mouse copy and paste at the command prompt (left-drag then right-click to copy, right-click to paste).

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I second this. Powershell is awesome - spend time getting to know the syntax and the commands and you will soon find living without it very hard. technet.microsoft.com/en-us/scriptcenter/dd742419.aspx – Jason Evans Dec 24 '09 at 20:34
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up vote 7 down vote

Cygwin's Bash is good.

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Unfortunately, cygwin itself isn't. – nb2580 Dec 24 '09 at 20:34
@Neil: I don't think most of it is their fault... it's not easy to implement some of these APIs totally in userspace -- consider fork(), for example. – SamB Jun 3 '10 at 20:10
Bash + Console from the other answer = lots of win – maayank Jun 29 '10 at 12:11
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up vote 5 down vote

You can copy text off of a command prompt window.

Right click on the caption of the command prompt, choose Edit, then Mark then select the text (with the mouse). hit enter. The text is now in the clipboard.

to paste, choose Edit, then Paste.

The batch language is indeed weak. But you can write scripts in VB or JavaScript instead if you like. Windows Script Host

just put a .js extension on your script files instead of .bat to get a whole new language.

Or install python, which is an even better script language.

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Nope. I already knew about that and it doesn't work. I submitted a bug report to Microsoft and that is the reason I opened the question – user17943 Dec 26 '09 at 21:27
OOh. The other tutorials I read about using "mark" (including Microsofts own help document) were wrong. Hitting enter does work but this process is highly cumbersome. Voted your answer up for effort – user17943 Dec 26 '09 at 21:28
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up vote 4 down vote

Python + IPython is a great replacement, while it doesn't provide say, multiple tabbed shells, but it lets you run scripts, interface with the basic Windows shell, write Python scripts that interact with it and all that.

If you need the .NET library (or can use it), then PowerShell is another great alternative.

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up vote 4 down vote

It should be noted that in windows the shell is explorer. So what you're looking for actually is a cmd replacement (you're actually looking for a terminal). In any case, apart from already mentioned, this guy here Jason Hood - made one which supoorts ANSI escape sequences (gets you colour in cmd) ... and it works nicely.

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Nitpicker! He obviously meant the other shell. (And csrss's fairly pathetic console implementation, coupled with the fact that the console APIs are essentially hardwired to csrss' console... but presumably he didn't know about that.) – SamB Jun 3 '10 at 20:13
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This adds ANSI colors to CMD. exe. Works nicely. Thanks. – Peter Kofler Jan 29 '11 at 20:22
Great and simple. – ron Mar 19 '11 at 13:59
Jason Hood's website seems to have gone away :-( but I found ANSICON on GitHub. Changed the link in the answer. – Dominic Sayers Oct 12 '11 at 19:37
@DominicSayers - Thanks! Appreciate it. – ldigas Oct 12 '11 at 19:55
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up vote 3 down vote

ColorConsole

Features:

  • Favorite commands
  • Export to HTML and RTF
  • Copy,Paste,Cut...
  • Customizable font style and color
  • Tabbed interface with multi cmd.exe.
  • Fast folder switch.
  • Portable
  • Free

alt text

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Seems nice but there seems to be an annoying flickering it produces. – user17943 Dec 26 '09 at 21:34
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Also "up" does not trigger any command buffer of any sort... – user17943 Dec 26 '09 at 21:37
Also the same thing I posted on musicfreak's answer, the color codes aren't showing up. It just shows [30;43m[2KOK, but incomplete or skipped tests! [0m[30;43m[2KTests: 158, Assertions: 212, Incomplete: 3. [0m[2K – user17943 Dec 26 '09 at 21:40
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up vote 2 down vote

I love Cygwin, mentioned earlier. But I'm not a fan of how Cygwin bash and other utilities interact with the default CMD.EXE terminal window.

Lately I've been using mintty for a basic terminal window. It's based on PuTTY so it looks and acts a lot like PuTTY does, but there are some differences that I keep tripping over. (In particular, mouse selection doesn't automatically copy like Putty does, and right-click doesn't automatically paste. But these may be configuration issues that I'll eventually solve.)

Due to the issues I've had with mintty, I'm also considering PuTTYcyg, and setting up sshd and using PuTTY directly on the localhost.

PuTTY handles ANSI colors well, so I don't think minTTY or PuTTYcyg will have trouble with them either.

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up vote 1 down vote

Another alternative is JP Software's Take Command.

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up vote 0 down vote

Not able to comment, so answering quack quixote's mintty concerns here: head for the Mouse page of its options dialog to enable copy-on-select and change the right mouse key action from 'Show menu' to 'Paste'. Middle-click pastes by default btw.

Compared to PuTTY(cyg), mintty has a bunch of improvements, some visible, some more behind the scenes. It's more integrated into Cygwin, because mintty itself runs as a Cygwin process and it supports Cygwin 1.7's locale/charset system. It's more xterm-compatible, e.g. it supports xterm's keycodes for arrow+modifier key combinations. And there's also a few gimmicks such as window transparency, mousewheel scrolling in 'less', or opening a file or URL by Ctrl+clicking on it.

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up vote 0 down vote

PowerCMD is very good, but I got annoyed because their home page does not make it clear that you are downloading a 30-day trial. Single license is $30.

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up vote 0 down vote

I have been looking for a good ANSI control aware replacement for cmd.exe to be used in a cygwin environment. I looked at Console2 and someothers which really didn't match my requirement to handle the ANSI Control Command set including cursor moving and erasing lines.

I found AnsiCon as pointed to by Idigas. It finally made my day.

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up vote 0 down vote

I like PromptPal as a command window replacement.

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