Some common synonyms of overcome are conquer, defeat, overthrow, reduce, subdue, and vanquish. While all these words mean “to get the better of by force or strategy,” overcome suggests getting the better of with difficulty or after hard struggle. Merriam-Webster
You must first command your fear, ignorance, and failures before you can overcome. Believe you can — Then you can.

Exploring the Commands

Continue: Exploring the Command Prompt

In the previous article,

Baby Steps-A Start Towards Geekness

we set up the command prompt. Now Open the Windows Command Prompt in the manner you have chosen.

Type CLS_[Press enter]. This clears the screen. A few observations here. I will no longer type [Press Enter] and will type the code to enter in this manner, CD_. Command Prompt is not terribly case sensitive and I will now and then forget to capitalize the commands. As we move around the hard drive you will begin to get a feel for its structure. The prompt itself tells you your focus [location on the hard drive]. The title on my window, “Administartor: Command Prompt”, reminds me to be careful as I could change settings on my windows machine. The first Command we’ll look at is the Change Directory command. Remember Help_.

Type Help CD_. Just read it…then we’ll try a few things and discover “wildcards”. Lets just see what it does.

Now type CD_ ,CD.._ , CD system32_ , CD\ . Note what happens at the prompt. Just the command alone tells you what the path to your focus directory is, CD.. moves you up one subdirectory, CD\ moves you to the root directory. CD Windows moves you from the root down to the windows directory then CD SYSTEM32 moves you down one more directory back to where you started.

Now try moving to the root of the drive by yourself. Just type CD\. Then try CD system32_. What happens? Now enter cd windows\system32_.

Computers Are Dumb

This is an example of how dumb computers are. Well if not dumb, litteral, must be told exactly what to do, and definitely not mind readers. The whole purpose of programming and languages is to learn how to tell the computer what you want done in a way that the machine will do what you want. Sometimes it will do even more-sometimes even less. To get the desired result requires debugging and testing. This is NOT because the computer hates you. Its because machines are dumb. I’ve also learned when you think a program is ready to use- find someone [any idiot will do] to try and break it.

In the case of the command not working in our example, while it accepted the command in a mixture of Capitals and small letters, the command prompt expected to be able to find the path — hence we had to tell the program not just where we wanted to go, but how to get there.

Now we’ll make a new directory called BatchFiles. Type MD BatchFiles_. Type CD BatchFiles_. If you type Dir_ you will see you have no files here. Okay Type Exit_. This closes the Command Prompt screen.

Creating a Batch File

Start up your command prompt again by your chosen means. Your back where we started. Type in Notepad StartLearning.bat_. It will tell you that it can’t find it, do you want to create it. Click Yes. You are now in notepad editing a text file called Startleaning.bat. In the Notepad Type “CD C:\BatchFiles”. Click the close window of the notepad. It will ask you is you want to save, click yes. In the command prompt window Check if its there by typing DIR *.bat_ or by typing TYPE startleaning.bat_.in the command window. It should print out what you saved in the Command Prompt window.

Note that I used the Dir command with the wildcard *.bat which is asking for a listing of all bat files in my focused directory. Now try running it by typing StartLearning_ at the Command Prompt. Command prompt should run the StartLearning batch and move you to the BatchFiles directory you created above. Prompt should show you in the BatchFiles directory. The system should tell you if something is wrong.
[Alternatively you can use the Alt-Tab key combination to move between the notepad and command prompt windows.] Your . This is where we’ll be doing the bulk of our learning.

Moving On

We’ve opened and used the Command Prompt, used the HELP, CD, MD, DIR, TYPE commands. Used notepad to create a Batch file to change directories from our start position to a working directory. Run and Debugged the batch file. The next article will explore the commands in more detail and create a Web page of the commands and instructions for quick reference. In the meantime use the HELP [cmd] to read what those commands have to say. If you want to rush ahead on Windows commands refer to the links at the end of the article. There aren’t that many commands and they are quick to learn. It becomes a little more complicated when we add switches, wildcards, and parameters.
Lets start with something simple. In the command window
type DIR C:\Windows\system32_ /pand press enter. You will see a list of files and directories, their sizes, and time and date they were created — a lot of them. The /p at the end of the command is a switch to pause each screen ful. You could leave that out and list the whole directory. Then use the scroll-bar the the right of the screen to look thru the listing.

Notice Directories are marked, and that the files end with .aaa where aaa denotes the file type. For example:

.dll Dynamic Link Library , .xml Application Program Interface,
.exe Executable files [programs], .png Portable Network Graphics just to note a few.

You can use this link

Browse File Types

to check out what an extension means. There are over 10,000 file types listed there. Wikipedia is also a source of information. Your computer uses this extension name to know what to do with that file. Take some time and look up a few, e.g. mp3, pdf, .wav. You will run across these many times in your programming. A search of the file extension on the internet can be very informative.
Back to our window. If your Dir is still running waiting for a keypress…just press Ctrl+C to break the run and get back to the prompt.

You should be back to a Command Prompt, which has the directory path in front of it. In my case C:\Batchfiles>. Type Exit_ to quit. Here’s a list of commands I tend to use.

Thanks for following along. I’ll try to get something setup so you can contact me, etc. Till Next time. DOldGeek

References:

• An A-Z Index of Windows CMD commands - SS64.com
• Batch File Commands (A-Z) | Explanation and Examples

Wandering

My journey back started with a lot of wandering. I call this R&D [Research and Development]. This just means I don’t know where I’m going. I had learned from my previous programing and business experience an 80–20 rule applied — 80% of the time would be spent on preparing, organizing, learning, and planning, 20% on the actual doing. This is somewhat flexible as the modern resources are so plentiful compared to 40 years ago. I naturally started with searching various topics on Google. From these sites I received newsletters and notices to follow up on. It has become clear that I suffer from dangers due to excessive ‘geekiness’.

Overwhelmed

Dangers In R&D
1. Rabbit Holes: My interests were wild and varied. Searches on Google lead me all sorts of places. I found articles on AI that looked interesting and I would explore. I found articles on data and structure I read and filed. Critiques on different programing languages. I would explore psychology, math. and physics. I looked at graphics, game engines, GIS, etc. etc. — all which either led me elsewhere or feed my curiosity and desire to get involved again. I asked questions in Discord and joined a group learning Cloud computing. I explored learning sites, and reading comments by various authors. I subscribed to some sites, notably Medium, Discord, GitHub, etc. In addition, I have a family, a wife, friends to fit in. I even have to eat and sleep every now and then.

2. Richness of Info: The sheer abundance and variety of information that was readily available only produced more rabbit holes. People are either just getting started or were way beyond where I was. Courses and learning sessions were there to be had. Exploring GitHub, Discord, Quorum, Reddit, Medium, MUD, Pinterest, Stack Overflow, IBM cloud, AWS, and Google clouds overwhelmed me. I even enrolled in StackSkills for a lifetime access and Great Courses for a video course in Python (as well as “Great Trials of History” and “Modern Understanding of Personality”).

I knew of Bill Gates when he worked out of his mothers garage on DOS. Geekiness was easy back then. Now people from all over the world are at my finger tips. Wiki was my go to but there is no end.

3. Trying new Things: I’ve downloaded and installed, Pycharm, Anaconda3, Visual Studio and Visual Code, GitHub and Git. I’ve discovered I can’t use them to any degree of effectiveness because I don’t know what I’m doing. Windows has gone through numerous iterations and Unix has become Linux. I suffer from a great deal of frustration. At this writing I have over 3000 articles, books, and essays and about 300 UTube Videos. Years ago I had bought and used Microsoft TechNet Programming and Development Suite and have used their suite of programming tools for Visual C++, Visual Basic, DB3, and Office Development suite — ( version 1.0 which still sits on my shelf). So I also explored MS learning systems and resources. I have developed websites so I was acquainted with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. I had developed databases for the largest Hydro distributer in North America and a Video rental system. I know I can do this but I was overwhelmed. I felt helpless. Much like a child in a candy store who can’t make up his mind which candy he wants. I no longer ran a company. I was alone.

4: How to Start: I rediscovered that old adage, “The more you know, the more you find out you don’t know, and the more you forget.” I might add, “The dumber you think you are.” Which brings me to current day. I’ve had to reapply the ‘kiss’ principle to my approach [Keep It Simple Stupid]. Also the ‘easy does it’ and the ‘first things first’ principles. [They are principles for a reason.] I’ll start at my beginning….a command prompt window. The first machines started with this black window waiting for instructions.

The Journey Has to have a Direction

The approach I’ve chosen to use is to build up to do something worthwhile. My rules are simple. The approach must be free or really cheap. Advice must be readily available. My current system is old but powerful enough to start things on. [At this time the prospect of getting an improved computer and improved internet connection is nil.]

And Purpose

I chose this approach toward Geekiness. This will be in the form of written articles for Medium. It will allow me to explore and organize my thoughts as I journey. It is not the trip but the traveling that will be rewarding. The writing will provide the discipline to focus. The expression of ideas will make sure I understand. No more wandering….we’ll maybe a little bit.

Revisiting DOS and work with Batch Files. In a sense, this is starting from where your at. The aim is to develop tools to manage my network, my writing, and my workplace. This in turn will provide material for my writing and keep me organized. I intend to remain functional while learning. I have to constantly remind myself I am no longer running a company. No longer lead, guide, and direct others, but am attempting to regain control of and grow myself. Thus the journey begins — again.

My previous article covered Notepad — so I could write this. This article will start a series combining DOS, WINDOWs, COMMAND.COM, maybe WScript, and CScript. All either on your machine already or freely available. For me, command.com allows me to redevelop a sense of being in touch with the ‘heart’ of the machine.

We will start by setting up the machine to use the command prompt and explore some of the many commands that are available to you. This is a powerful tool that is readily available to you at any time. In addition it provides the means to write what are called Batch Files, sequence of commands that can be run by a click or typing in the Batch File name.

Open A Command Window

There are several ways you can open the command window. We’ll create a shortcut and place it on the Task Bar at the bottom of the screen. You could simply type cmd in the [Type here to search] at the bottom left of the screen, choose the Run as administrator:

I suggest you choose the Open File Location, Rt. Click, drag and drop the Command Prompt shortcut to you desktop and choose Copy here. Close the Programs>Windows System window. Then Rt. Clk on the shortcut icon you created, choose Properties [last entry on the list]. Then click the Advanced Option:

Close the Programs>Windows System window. Then Rt. Clk on the shortcut icon you created, choose Properties [last entry on the list]. Then click the Advanced Option:

You can the click the Run as Administrator box, click Okay Button, click Apply button. This will give you a shortcut on the Screen to opening the Command Prompt as administrator any time you want. I choose to Rt. Clk. once again on the shortcut and choose the Pin to Task Bar option.

This pins a shortcut icon on the task bar [bottom of the screen on my system]. I can then delete the shortcut from my desktop by Rt. Clk. and Choose delete. Whenever I want to run the Command Prompt I just click on the icon, then click on Yes. This tends to remind me that I can cause problems as the command prompt in administrator mode is capable of changing system settings. Now single click on the icon on the task bar and your ready to start learning how to tell your computer to do something. With these commands we will be able to combine them into scripts called batch files.

What Next

Commands:

From this screen you can communicate directly with your computer. There aren’t that many commands and they are quick to learn. It becomes a little more complicated when we add switches and parameters. Lets start with something simple. In the command window note the following:

The prompt itself tells you where you are. Think of it as the ‘focus’ of the prompt. In this case you are on C: drive, Directory Windows, Subdirectory system32. It also gives you information about the system you are running on.

Now Type HELP /?_ [Press enter].

This will give you help for any command. You just type Help [command]. Fist command to try is Change Directory, CD for short. So type HELP CD_ [Press enter]. You may see Press any key to continue at the bottom is your window size is to small to display all the text. Do so and you will see the rest of the Help message. This command allows you to move the focus around your hard drive. Your system probably started in c:\Windows\system32> as shown in the command prompt. “C:\” means the root of C drive, “ Windows\” directory, “system32” subdirectory. Items are stored on a drive in your computer signified by a Letter in this case C. Then in directories, then given names. At one time you could know them all but no longer. Don’t try. Don’t confuse storage with memory either. Your system will read files from your drive into memory to manipulate them. What files you say.

Type DIR_ [Press enter]. A big list of files, directories, is displayed. After pressing ‘any key’ a few times you will see a summary. In my “system32" directory there are 4404 files, and 127 directories. And this is just the directory your focused on. Currently on my main drive there are 1,307,526 million files. You will learn that your computer associates file extensions [filename.ext] with certain programs . Over time you will become familiar with may of them. You don’t have to memorize them. For now though remember that the “.bat” extension means its a batch file and runs either in a command prompt window or calls cmd.exe to run when clicked on.

Welcome to geekdom. [to be continued…Command and Conquer]

In the next article [Command and Conquer] we will start to explore the Command Prompt , create a batch file, and prepare a HTML reference sheet.

Till then, Thanks for reading and following me. d’OldGeek.

Once upon a time, long ago, while shopping for some furs at a Russian Furrier, my wife made a comment about me not knowing furs. She said, “ He’s a Geek” The furrier expressed confusion and asked her what a Geek was. She spent the next half hour explaining to the Russian just what that meant. Until that moment I had never thought of my self in that way, a Nerd maybe.

Background

Now that I’m a 78-year-old, retired consultant I have to agree with her. Sixty-five years ago I built my first computer from relays salvaged from a pinball machine. Electronics became a passion with Vacuum tubes, the Radio Amateurs Handbook, and the local Radio Amateurs Club providing the knowledge and advice to build equipment. I joined the local Air Cadet core which built my self-esteem and confidence. I am blessed-cursed with many abilities, a somewhat keen intelligence, a curious nature, and a certain lack of wisdom and people skills.

When I graduated from High School, I joined the RCAF [Royal Canadian Air Force}. I was hoping the experience would provide some direction to a future career path. After a week of aptitude and ability testing, the counselor told me that any path I wanted to take, I could succeed in — except being a clerk — that would bore me to death. I asked what was the most difficult one and became a Telecom Ground Tech. I was introduced to transistors, printed circuits, and Integrated Circuitry.

After a tour of duty (3 years), I left the full-time force and enrolled with the Reserves while attending University. A kit bought from Popular Electronics opened the world of personal computing. A degree in Math and Psychology kept opening new vistas. A Commador Pet, Radio Shack Model 80, some knowledge of Forth led to me program a storage system using a cassette recorder [no floppy disks or hard drives then]. I soon moved to a bigger computer — HP8080, floppy disks and hard drives. Most programming was machine language.

Work during this period included Burroughs Business Machines as a Senior Field Engineer and CNCP Telecommunications as Senior Technician. There I was introduced to mainframes — such as they were at the time. Switches were mainly mechanical but moved to computers. We booted our mainframe by hand-feeding a punched tape through a telex reader. At Burroughs the latest thing was an office computer the size of a good-sized desk with an explosion-proof drawer to contain the hard drive. The head had a habit of crashing into the disk with rather catastrophic results.

WordPerfect, spell checkers, Spreadsheets, DB3, and DBIV were used. I joined TechNet and got the complete Visual Studio to do projects with. After a set of courses for MCSE, I Started my own business specializing in small and medium-sized companies. Wrote a VCR Rental system, Accountant placement system with Resume tracking, and a tool tracking system for the largest Hydro distribution company in North America. I taught programming and computers at a community college. It was in starting my own company that I really grew.

I had a friend who lived in Atlanta. He was a successful entrepreneur. I phoned asked him for advice on starting my own business. He told me he was in Spain at the moment but would stop in Owen Sound, Ontario on his way home. He flew in that weekend and spent the afternoon with me. I laid out my business plan in detail. What he taught me then was a valuable lesson.

He said to me: “Glen — I have some good news and some bad news for you. The good news is that you can be your own boss.”

To which I replied, “What is the bad news?”.

“You will be your own boss.”, he said.

Since then I was always aware that answers to many of my problems were to be found in myself. Some of them were found in who I asked, but the decision was always mine. So it is with my decision to return to my journey back to lifetime learning and ‘geekiness’.

Moving On

I want to thank Valerie for giving me the final nudge to start. [add link to her Medium profile here]. I enjoyed her article “Dare To Be Better”. She reminded me of another coder I hired 30+ years ago.

She came to my company from one that belittled her, put her down, etc -something that I apologize for on the behalf of all men. After a year of experience and assurance that she knew more than I and that I was basically dumb and depended on her. She was able to move on to bigger and better things. I was sorry to see her go but we were a small firm and her abilities and talent were meant for great things and for far better pay than we could afford. You also impress me as a great coder, organizer, with people abilities that far exceed mine. I hope for great things for you Valerie. Best of luck. So when I received your email after subscribing to you on Medium, I replied. So here it is. I offer my first lesson:

Use what’s Right in front of you

You will notice the reasonably blank screen at the start of this article. That’s what’s in front of my nose. So open a NotePad document. Rt.Clk on the blank screen. Move down to New, and Rt.Clk on Text Document. This creates a blank object on your screen called,NewTextDocument.txt. Dbl.Clk on the object to open it. Alternatively, type notepad in the bottom left, where it says [Type here to search] and Push <Enter>. You should get this:

On NotePad. [Seeing as I had it open and in my case, typing this.]

Notepad has always been a convenient way to quickly create notes for myself. I thought I had better turn on SpellChecker seeing as I was typing for someone else to read. I couldn’t remember how — a common occurrence these days. So I opened up a notepad doc and took a look around. I learned that I could turn on/off the Status bar at the bottom by View tab on the menu. There, I clicked Status Bar of Notepad to turn it on. I also took note of the Zoom option. Another thing I had not noticed before. I also saw Page Setup, something new, under File on the Menu tab. While exploring I noticed Ctl+P to quickly print rather than File/Print from the menu bar.

To Newbies, don’t be afraid to explore the programs you have access to. It's interesting what you will find. Further, when it comes to programming, you will see what others have done.

Create a Log File:

I knew from previous use, about opening a New Text File, adding .LOG to the first line at the top, saving and closing it. Then every time I opened the file, it would automatically insert the current time/date in the next line. I used to keep this text file named DailyLog.txt on my desktop to track my daily activities. [This can also be done manually in a notepad document. Select Time/Date under the Edit Menu item or press F5 when you want to time/date stamp something.]

Turn on SpellChecker:

No Spell-checker there. Okay. I know it is there somewhere as it autocorrects on my tablet. I typed spell in the search bar on the bottom left of the screen and I found it under Settings/Devices/Typing. You could just enter [typing] there and it will take you right to it.

It was turned on there. Wait a minute. That’s for the software keyboard. Further down the page is Hardware Keyboard. I turn on autocorrect and text suggestions on there and Voila — I have spell correct as I type in Notepad. There are multilingual and more settings in advanced. [It also was turned on in Wordpad.]

I’ve also noticed that a * is added to the title bar in front of the file name if I’ve added text and haven’t saved it yet. Notepad also warns me if I try to close it and haven’t saved it yet.

More than Just Text Files

You can use the File/Save As to create an XML or a JavaScript file in notepad. Rather handy. When you have the Save As dialogue, enter the file name including XML enclosed in quotation marks, and click Save. There are detailed instructions in the next example. Just replace HTML with XML. You have an XML document. What is XML? Another time. You can also create JavaScript in notepad and save it by changing the [HTML] with [JS].

Create your First Web Page:

Similarly, you can also use notepad to create HTML code. Open notepad, enter your HTML code. For example, for those who don’t know HyperText Markup Language, copy and paste the following into a new notepad file. [Hold down the left button, highlight the text, then left-click on the hilite text, choose Copy from the popup menu. Go to the new text document, left-click on the document, and choose Paste from the popup menu.]

[Start Hillite, click and hold Lft. Mouse button below this]

<h1> This Is Sample Notepad In HTML </h1>
<p>
To save this notepad as HTML, enter this code in notepad. Then, on the top left of notepad, click File -> Save As.
</p>
<p>
When the Save As dialogue opens, enter the name of the file you want to save it as — followed by a period (.) — after the period enter HTML. Finally, enclose everything in double-quotes. For example “page.HTML”.
When you are done, click Save.
</p>
</body>

[End hi-lite by releasing mouse button above this line]

Left-click on the highlighted text, and choose copy. Paste it in your text file, Choose Save As, and enter “FirstWebPage.HTML”

Any files you’ve saved so far should be on your desktop.

Double-click on the HTML file you saved and it opens a web page with the browser of choice. A quick and dirty way to create web pages. Coding in HTML [HyperTextMarkupLanguage] is another matter but its not hard. Your computer decides what to do with the file based on the extension [.HTML, .EXE , .JS, .XML,.TXT etc.}

Shortcut Keys

Last, but not least, ShortCut Keys. I am a touch typist. [An ability worth cultivating for a programmer.] The use of shortcut keys however is a trait I have not cultivated a lot. Time to change that.

So this was typed in Notepad, copied to Wordpad for enhancements — screen captures and then to WPS Office for tables. Then cut/paste to Medium. I’ll try out Google Docs &/or Open Office in the future. Hopefully learn to do this right in Medium. In the meantime, I’ll move ahead with what’s right in front of me.

Next, we’ll open the Command Window, run notepad, Wordpad, and start batch files. Discuss support and Resources available. I call it R&D.

Submitted for your comments, editing, suggestions, etc. I’ll see if I can figure out how to enter profile info etc. in Medium. Looking forward to your reply. Remember, I’m old enough to realize that I don’t know everything and can take criticisms gracefully:

Submitted Dec 12, 2021 10:26