Windows 7 / Getting Started

Arguments, Commas, and Quotes

When a command-line program requires you to specify information such as the name of a file to process or an option to use, you usually type this information after the command name with the items separated by spaces. For example, the delete command erases the file or files named on its command line:

delete somefile.txt anotherfile.txt

You can also separate command-line arguments with the semicolon (;) or comma (,), but this is not recommended; CMD accepts this to be compatible only with good old COMMAND.COM.

Unfortunately, because Windows filenames can contain spaces in the middle of the name, the command

delete c:\Users\bknittel\Documents\My Music\mpeg files\files.txt

attempts to delete three files: C:\Users\bknittel\Documents\My, Music\mpeg, and files\files.txt.To solve this problem, CMD interprets quotation marks (") to mean that the text enclosed is to be treated as part of one single argument. For example, the command

delete "c:\Users\bknittel\Documents\My Music\mpeg files\files.txt"

deletes the one indicated file.The quotation marks are not seen as part of the filename; they just keep it all together.

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In this tutorial:

  1. The CMD Command-Line
  2. CMD Versus COMMAND
  3. Running CMD
  4. Opening a Command Prompt Window with Administrator Privileges
  5. CMD Options
  6. Disabling Command Extensions
  7. Command-Line Processing
  8. Console Program Input and Output
  9. Using the Console Window
  10. I/O Redirection and Pipes
  11. Copy and Paste in Command Prompt Windows
  12. Command Editing and the History List
  13. Name Completion
  14. Enabling Directory Name Completion
  15. Multiple Commands on One Line
  16. Grouping Commands with Parentheses
  17. Arguments, Commas, and Quotes
  18. Escaping Special Characters
  19. Configuring the CMD Program
  20. The Search Path
  21. Changing the Path
  22. Predefined and Virtual Environment Variables
  23. Setting Default Environment Variables
  24. Built-in Commands
  25. Extended Commands
  26. Listing Files with the Dir Command
  27. Paginating Long Listings
  28. Printing Directory Listings
  29. Sorting Listings
  30. Locating Alternate File Streams
  31. Setting Variables with the Set Command
  32. Conditional Processing with the if Command
  33. Scanning for Files with the for Command
  34. Using the for Command's Variable
  35. Processing Directories
  36. Numerical for Loop
  37. Getting More Information