Windows 7 / Getting Started

Printing Directory Listings

Don't you find it annoying that Windows Explorer has no "print" command? Ha! Here's an area where the command-line environment is much more capable.You can easily print a directory listing from the command line.

You can redirect the output of any dir command to a network printer or to your local printer if you've shared it, using commands such as the following:

cd \Users\\bknittel\Documents\My Music

dir >\\localhost\printername

where printername is the share name of your printer.This technique doesn't tell the printer to finish the last page of the listing, however, and you probably have to manually eject the last page.

Tip: You can gain a bit more control over the process by redirecting the listing to a file and then printing it with Notepad or a word processor. However, if you redirect the directory listing into a file in the same directory you're listing, the listing file will appear in the output. You can avoid this by directing the listing file into another directory, as with these commands:

cd \Users\bknittel\Documents\My Music
dir /s >..\list
notepad ..\list
del ..\list

Note that .. represents the directory one level above the directory being listed. After printing the listing with Notepad, you can delete the scratch file.

Getting Lists of Filenames

The default directory listing format lists dates, sizes, times, header information, and a summary.The /b option asks dir to print a list of names only.The output of such a listing can be redirected to a file, where it can be used as input to programs, batch files, or WSH scripts that want, as input, a list of filenames.

When you use /s and /b, the dir command lists the full path for all files it displays. For example, from my Windows directory, dir /b /s *.wav prints a long list of files starting with these:

C:\WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav\wmpaud1.wav
C:\WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav\wmpaud2.wav

C:\WINDOWS\Help\Tours\WindowsMediaPlayer\Audio\Wav\wmpaud9.wav
C:\WINDOWS\Media\chimes.wav
C:\WINDOWS\Media\chord.wav
C:\WINDOWS\Media\ding.wav
C:\WINDOWS\Media\notify.wav
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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