Shoutbox

To show a list of batch/commandline commands you can press help in a command prompt. But how to read it?

I tried:

code:

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rem file.bat
help
pause

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It went crazy.

I found out pressing break stops the program, but then I can only read half the file.
Especially when reading a single command like
help echo
won't make me read it because if I press too fast I read nothing. If I press too slow I miss it.

Google searching for batch help, doesn't show me links with exactly the same information.

Simply scroll the command window up after it has finished displaying everything.

But help.exe automatically closes after having run it.

If you used the batch file you showed in your first post then the window will not close as long as you don't press a key... Simply scroll the window to read all the text.



Anyways, if you are working in a bacth file or wanting to do stuff on the command line it is always best (and logic) to first start the command interpreter, instead of doing everything from inside a batch file or from Windows Explorer:

Windows Start > Run > cmd

I opened from commandprompt. I am finally able to read it.
Thanks.

You could've also done:
help | more
Which would've paused after every page of output.

quote:

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Originally posted by andrewdodd13
You could've also done:
help | more
Which would've paused after every page of output.

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which still needed the command interpreter though... it wouldn't work from Windows Run command.

(and once you presed a key to go to the next screen you can't go back to the previous one, except with scrolling)

My bad, I should've tried it first .

Of course, there's always cmd /c help | more - this does work, because it starts the program from within a shell.

yep...

somelauw, there are also of course some other things you can do.
eg: to print all the help:
c:\> help > prn

to make a textfile of all the help:
c:\> help > help.txt
which you then can read with notepad for example

etc...

I remember I tried that last one before but I see why that didn't work. I made another batch file called help.bat which was executed instead. I'm sometimes that confused.

Thanks a lot.