In one of the most overlooked cool things at the PDC, the new Command Shell that will be in Longhorn blew me away when I saw it. I walked up to the booth asking if unix-like file aliases would be in the new shell, and was given a demo by the team that had my mind racing.” Read the article at ASP.net.
Regarding Microsoft’s New CLI
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
55 Comments
2003-11-02 4:48 am
2003-11-02 4:52 am
2003-11-02 4:54 am
2003-11-02 5:28 am
2003-11-02 10:02 am
2003-11-03 7:45 pm
2003-11-04 1:52 am
I would want to know more… this text is not very feature explicit:
This new shell could be worst than DOS and MAYBE a little be better than Bash (I doubt).
Another feature, some new securitie’s hole?
It’s taken Microsoft how many years to decide that they need a decent CLI?!
Security of the Shell will be dependent on how well Longhorn seperates normal user and sysadmin activities. Also, how scriptable the operating system objects are. Win98 allowed any user to write a script using WSH to access the registry. I haven’t played with WSH on WinXP, so I do not know what is allowed.
You really can not compare the Windows Shell with those on Unix. Because of the way Windows is structured, the Shell can be tightly integrated. On Unix, integrating a Shell too deeply will sacrifice portability. Unix programmers would rather have the portability. Since there is only one Windows, Microsoft doesn’t have to worry about portability.
Looks like dotNet classes are really providing an underlying unity to all future Windows efforts. Pretty cool.
How many years is it going to take to for MicroSoft to notice their slashes are going the wrong direction?
One last thing: anything can be mapped to a drive, and drives don’t just have to be letters.
So, we’ve finally caught up to AmigaDOS…
Its nice to see that something like this is going into a commercial OS. Again, its nothing new (scsh, emacs, others on UNIX, going *way* back to commercial Lisp implementations) but its cool that the masses are finally going to get a taste of it. I don’t really think that C# is the best language to use here (I’d prefer something with less syntax like Python) but it makes sense given the integration with the rest of the OS.
> This new shell could be worst than DOS and MAYBE a little be better than Bash (I doubt).
I hope you’re not implying bash is worse than DOS. If anything, it’s an infair comparison. You can, however, compare Linux without X to DOS, or command.com to bash.
is the ability to use Unix navigational commands in the Command line…I have “dir” and “” takes up to much time for simple operations.
Anyone know if the new cli will support “kingcon”-like completion (window-based completion) and auto change dir (you type the dir name without “cd” and that’s enough to changedir…) ?
(just like that one: http://nogfx.free.fr/windows/NewCLI_BETA1.zip)
Regards,
Leo.
It’s always: “M$ doesn’t even have (insert feature) and they suck!”
When MS introduces the very feature that they are criticized for not having: “It’s about time! Look how sorry it is compared to (insert zealot’s fav OS)! They ripped off (insert zealot’s fav OS, again)!”
Save every one the time and just say that no matter what MS Windows has, or does, some of you will never give even the tiniest bit of praise.
“Save every one the time and just say that no matter what MS Windows has, or does, some of you will never give even the tiniest bit of praise.”
MS doesn’t need/want the “bit of praise”. they’re after the cash. and since so many people give them what they want, why should they get the bonus of being praised by people that use better tools?
that being said, i think this will be a nice feature. however, it’s funny that in this wonderful MS world we live in a decent shell can only be released together with a 3d GUI.
Find themselves in dos peridically and freeking out when “TAB” doesnt complete a file name.
“they’re after the cash.”
No matter what business it is, ALL businesses are after the very same thing. To make a huge profit is the main purpose of a business, and looks like Microsoft has done just that.
Sandman
Look, instead of thinking that MS is ripping off every hobby OS out there, how about looking at it from the “listening to clients viewpoint”?
Fact is, every windows power user of a certain age lamented the kneecapping of the cli in ME/2000/XP, since alot of very tedious work could get bypassed by some reltively simple scripting. V-DOS, virutal dos, just doesn’t cut it, and this has been one of the criticisms levelled at windows by the linux fanboys.
Now that they are reintroducing a cli, it’s “you are copying xyzOS”. Seems to me, they’ve been looking at the criticsms of their OS, and looked for solutions. That’s a good thing, regardless of where the ideas came from.
The fact is, they are making incremental steps in the right direction, and deserve some credit for listening to their critics.
Find themselves in dos peridically and freeking out when “TAB” doesnt complete a file name.
I believe tab completion is enabled per default in XP’s cmd.exe. It has to be enabled manually in 2k.
>It’s always: “M$ doesn’t even have (insert feature) and they suck!”
>When MS introduces the very feature that they are criticized for not having: “It’s about time! Look how sorry it is compared to (insert zealot’s fav OS)! They ripped off (insert zealot’s fav OS, again)!”
>Save every one the time and just say that no matter what MS Windows has, or does, some of you will never give even the tiniest bit of praise.
I find the MSH funny because the whole basis of MS’s TCO models is the fact that CLI is obsolete and they everything needs to be done with a GUI. In terms of MS’s previous statements, isn’t this a huge step back to the 70’s in terms of computing?
You can, however, compare Linux without X to DOS, or command.com to bash.
That’s not a fair comparison either. DOS doesn’t have:
long file names
tab completion
adequate scripting abilities
virtual terminals
the ability to set security attributes on each file
etc.
and Linux without X doesn’t have:
an 8.3 filename limitation
a 640k memory limitation
DOS’ crippling hardware limitations for memory and disk size
one and only one screen resolution
the need to tie executability to file extensions.
etc.
Don’t forget multitasking, starting processes in background and utilities like screen that allow to share the screen between running terminal-based programs.
“MS doesn’t need/want the “bit of praise”. they’re after the cash. and since so many people give them what they want, why should they get the bonus of being praised by people that use better tools?”
What are thier employees supposed to use to feed thier families with, praise and better software tools? Where does your food come from?
“Look, instead of thinking that MS is ripping off every hobby OS out there..”
What hobby OS has MS ripped off and which features?
“Fact is, every windows power user of a certain age lamented the kneecapping of the cli in ME/2000/XP…”
Fact is 2000 and XP has a more powerful CLI than any MS OS before. Server 2003 extends the CLI even further.
“I find the MSH funny because the whole basis of MS’s TCO models is the fact that CLI is obsolete and they everything needs to be done with a GUI.”
Link to where you find that statement or anything similar on Microsofts website.
hmm…if by Powerful CLI you mean listing file names on the right side, and creation date on the left making it is nightmare to see what is going on, needing to type dir and to move to directories which just so happens to be one of the most clumsy command combinations you could do on a keyboard, and having long standard directory names also making navigation a pain, then yeah, they have a powerful CLI.
but to me, they need small directory names (the GUI can abstract this to the long names like “My Documents” and “Documents and settings” where name length is irrelevant) a simplified(for typing), streamlined command list, and they need to have file names on the left like normal people read, OH and color coding would be nice as well.
in my opinion, DOS was better because at least you could configure it with utilities to color code, map commands to different key combinations, etc. making it easier to work in.
http://www.microsoft.com/india/indiadev/jobs/nextgen.htm
“The Microsoft Next Generation Shell Team is designing and developing a new command line scripting environment from the ground up. The new shell and utilities, based on the .NET Frameworks, will provide a very rich object-based mechanism for managing system properties. To be delivered in the next release of Windows, it will include the attributes of shells (e.g. aliases, job control, command substitution, pipelines, regular expressions, transparent remote execution) plus rich features based on Windows and .NET (e.g. command discovery via .NET reflection API’s, object-based properties/methods, 1:many server scripting, pervasive auto-complete).”
“hmm…if by Powerful CLI you mean listing file names on the right side…”
No I mean things like being able to manage Active Directory from the command line.
That page was last updated on October 18 of this year. Your point is?
uhh…yeah, thanks for even attempting to talk about the rest of my post….and who cares about being able to manage AD from the CLI, the usability of it blows, as I pointed out in my post.
if a tool that does something is unusable, or really bad in usability, it is not powerful.
When I deal with directory listings I am using Explorer.
If a script is dealing with directory listings it doesn’t care what side file creation dates are on.
Anybody that is using the CLI for simple file management is a masochist is my opinion. This is coming for someone that had no choice for years of using TRS-DOS.
Oh yes!!
Bah…I am no masochist.
Unix CLI file managment is simple and fast. if MS would make their CLI as nice, it would be usable.
@Bill Sykes
That item was original posted verbatim on Slashdot (and OSAlert) probably 9 to 12 months ago or so. It shows the direction that the Longhorn CLI is taking. Looks sweet.
What problem does .net solve that cannot conveniently be solved in a UNIX(-like) environment?
Really, I’d like to know!
…if you have something similar to the 4DOS/4OS2/4NT “SELECT” command at your disposal.
There’s no reason why a shell can’t provide point-and-shoot file selection just like Midnight Commander, and some shells do.
If Microsoft wants a good command line, they could do a lot worse than purchasing the rights to 4NT from the JP Software folks. IMO.
It would be nice to be able to control everything on a windows box remotely via a command line. But for some reason I doubt Microsoft can really impress in this arena. Imagine trying to kill a process and having it laugh at you like current windows task manager end process. This seems to me to just be a placation to the CLI die hards.
Correction: anyone using an MS CLI for simple file management is a masochist. UNIX CLIs, on the other hand, rock. I’ve got a perfectly good GUI file manager on my desktop (Konqueror) but I only use it when I need to take advantage of KIO to get a remote fle. For everything else, the UNIX CLI works great. I hate using the GUI for file management. You have to open all these directories, switch between windows, go back to previous directories; click, click, click! In the CLI, even complex tasks are just a simple command. Also, if you’re guiding a user through a task over the phone, I much prefer to use a CLI because its very straightforward and unambiguous, none of the “okay, so what does it say in the little box next to the button… no, the one with the white background… no, the one above that…”.
Imho this cli won’t be used by todays windows admins, they are simple to spoiled with point and click (not sayin all, but something like 95% are). So I don’t think it’s targeted for this group. It’s clearly that MS wants to attract Linux/Unix admins to the Windows platform.
Well I have to say I’m not gonna switch, I know bash pretty good, and don’t see any advantages in MSHELL. I don’t even want to run a server with a GUI. So will this be an option too? Disabling the GUI?
reminds me a little of http://www.beanshell.org , but for .net..
I think it would be great when there would be a shell wich supports the KIO or gnome’s VFS system.
Well, this would be great but in some points problematic. It maybe would only work when you could mount KIO filesystems to the unix filesystem: “mount -t kio https://user:passwd@somehost/ /mnt/somehost”
But it would be nicer when “cd https://user:passwd@somehost/“ would work. Or “cp -r smb://user:passwd@smbhost/dir ftps://user:passwd@ftpshost/“!!
“You can, however, compare Linux without X to DOS, or command.com to bash.”
Linux is implicitly without X, since Linux is only a kernel.
“How many years is it going to take to for MicroSoft to notice their slashes are going the wrong direction?”
Thanks mate, that was the best one yet!
AMEN Rayiner!!!!!!
which would be why I would like a Unix CLI in windows….there is no reason they should have such a horrable CLI.
WindowsXP has tab completion on by default. And even in Windows 2000, it is an option.
-G
It will, Windows Admins do use shells, and Windows Scripting Host, and Bash.
Well, in the MS-only place I work, I use all three, while the other admins just use the first two (for scripts, more than CLIs, which is what this kind of thing is for.)
While it looks very cool, I prob. will not use it much. Nothing says “job securty” more than a few pages of AWK.
“…which would be why I would like a Unix CLI in windows….there is no reason they should have such a horrible CLI.”
http://www.interopsystems.com/
I’ve been looking for a specific recent Microsoft sponsored report that I have not been able to find. It was a comparison of the number of steps it took to install and configure a Windows and Linux server. The people doing the study counted a gui configuration as one step no matter how complex the gui and how many stages it had, while any command typed into the command line counted as each one step. If two cli commands were needed to do one configuration step, it counted as two steps. The conclusion was that the gui tools that were shipped with Windows were easier because they required fewer steps as defined for this study. Sorry it was not TCO it was initial cost of ownership.
I think this shows how far behnind windows has always been compared to other operating systems.
You must be looking for this (see first item on list):
http://www.veritest.com/clients/reports/microsoft/default.asp
You must be looking for this (see first item on list):