A pattern-matching mini-language for searching, validating, and rewriting text — implemented (with subtly different dialects) by every modern language and CLI tool.
Prevent display, idle, system, or user-active sleep for the duration of a command, a fixed time, or a process — without permanently changing pmset.
Drive macOS GUI apps, system events, dialogs, notifications, and Finder from the terminal using AppleScript or JavaScript for Automation (JXA).
Pipe data into and out of the macOS pasteboard from the shell — multi-pasteboard targets, newline handling, shell aliases, and real-world copy-paste recipes.
Display, add, and delete entries in the Windows ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) cache — map IP addresses to MAC addresses, detect IP conflicts, and diagnose Layer 2 connectivity issues.
View and modify Windows file attributes (hidden, read-only, system, archive) from the command line. Covers all attribute flags, recursive operations, and practical recipes for unhiding malware-hidden files and managing backups.
View and modify the Windows Boot Configuration Data store — manage boot entries, set default OS, change timeouts, enable debugging, and configure boot options from an elevated command prompt.
Navigate the Windows command prompt's current working directory. Covers drive switching, absolute and relative paths, UNC paths, and path-with-spaces quoting.
Scan a FAT or NTFS volume for file system errors and bad sectors, optionally repairing them — the built-in Windows disk health and integrity tool for drives and volumes.
Clear all text from the cmd.exe or PowerShell console window and reset the cursor to the top-left — the single command for resetting a terminal session's visible output.
Copy one or more files to a new location in the Windows command prompt. Covers single-file copy, wildcard batches, file concatenation, and binary vs ASCII modes.
Analyze, defragment, and optimize volumes from the command line — consolidate free space on HDDs, issue TRIM on SSDs, and schedule or review optimization tasks.
Delete one or more files from the Windows command prompt. Covers wildcards, quiet mode, attribute overrides, recursive deletion patterns, and the distinction from rmdir.
Display files and folders in a directory with filtering, sorting, formatting, and recursive traversal options. The Windows cmd.exe equivalent of Unix ls.
Create, delete, format, extend, shrink, and assign drive letters to disk partitions from the Windows command prompt using an interactive or scripted REPL interface.
Display all installed device drivers on a local or remote Windows machine — module name, type, link date, and driver file path — for hardware audits and troubleshooting.
Print text to stdout, expand environment variables, write blank lines, redirect output to files, and toggle command-echoing in cmd.exe batch scripts.
Compare two text or binary files line-by-line or byte-by-byte and report their differences — the built-in Windows equivalent of Unix diff for quick file audits in cmd.exe.
Search for string patterns inside files or piped input on Windows — the built-in grep equivalent for cmd.exe, with support for regular expressions, case-insensitive matching, and recursive directory searches.
Inspect and manage NTFS file system internals — query volume info, manage hard links, sparse files, reparse points, the USN journal, and the dirty bit — from an elevated command prompt.
Display the MAC (hardware) addresses and associated transport names for all network adapters on a local or remote Windows machine — useful for asset inventory, DHCP reservation setup, and network access control.
Display the DNS hostname of the local Windows machine from the command prompt — useful in scripts to identify the machine without parsing systeminfo output.
Display and modify NTFS access control lists on files and directories — grant, deny, or remove permissions for users and groups, manage inheritance, and save or restore full ACL sets.
Display and manage TCP/IP network configuration for all adapters on a Windows machine — covers full adapter details, DNS cache operations, and DHCP lease management.
Create, start, stop, and manage Data Collector Sets for performance counters, event traces, and configuration data — the command-line interface to Windows Performance Monitor for scripted monitoring and automated log collection.
Create one or more directories from the Windows command prompt. Covers single and nested directory creation, batch patterns, and common scripting idioms.
List, create, and remove NTFS volume mount points and display the unique volume GUID path for any drive letter or directory junction from the command prompt.
Move files to a new location or rename them within the Windows command prompt. Covers single files, wildcards, directory renames, overwrite control, and cross-drive behaviour.
Create, delete, and modify local security groups on a Windows machine — add or remove members, list group memberships, and manage built-in groups from the command prompt.
Create, modify, delete, and list local Windows user accounts from the command prompt — set passwords, manage account expiry, lock/unlock accounts, and control logon hours.
Configure network interfaces, firewall rules, wireless profiles, port proxies, and Winsock settings from an elevated command prompt — the comprehensive Windows network configuration CLI.
Display active TCP/UDP connections, listening ports, routing tables, interface statistics, and per-connection process IDs from the Windows command prompt.
Trace the route to a destination and measure per-hop packet loss and latency over a sustained sampling period — more diagnostic than tracert and more thorough than ping for identifying intermittent network problems.
Send ICMP echo requests to a host to test reachability, measure round-trip latency, and detect packet loss from the Windows command prompt.
Manage Windows power plans, enable or disable hibernation, diagnose battery health and sleep failures, and generate energy efficiency reports from the command prompt.
Variables, operators, pipelines, Where-Object, ForEach-Object, Select-Object, sorting, grouping, remoting, jobs, CIM, registry, JSON, error handling, and common cmdlets.
Complete reference for every automatic and preference variable built into PowerShell — $_, $Error, $MyInvocation, $PSCmdlet, $Host, $PSVersionTable, $ExecutionContext, and all preference variables that tune runtime behaviour.
Master terminating vs non-terminating errors, $ErrorActionPreference, try/catch/finally, throw vs Write-Error, transcripts, and strict mode.
Deep dive on PowerShell's object pipeline: Where-Object, Select-Object, ForEach-Object, Sort-Object, Group-Object, Measure-Object, Compare-Object, Out-GridView, parallel execution, and the two filter forms.
Execute PowerShell against one or many remote hosts using WinRM or SSH transport, persistent sessions, credential management, and JEA.
Author production-grade PowerShell: advanced functions with [CmdletBinding()], parameter validation, pipeline-bound parameters, splatting, switch parameters, .ps1 vs .psm1, and all the control-flow constructs.
Query, add, modify, export, and import Windows registry keys and values with the built-in reg.exe — the scriptable, no-dependency tool for everything from one-off tweaks to full backup-and-restore.
Delete empty or entire directory trees from the Windows command prompt. Covers the /S and /Q flags, force-removing read-only trees, and safe deletion patterns.
Production-grade file and directory synchronisation with mirroring, multi-threading, retry logic, logging, and exclusion filters. The go-to for backup scripts and deployment pipelines on Windows.
Display, add, delete, and modify entries in the Windows IP routing table — control how packets are forwarded between subnets, add persistent static routes, and diagnose routing failures.
Launch a program in the security context of a different user account — elevate to Administrator, switch to a service account, or test application behaviour under a restricted identity.
Query, create, configure, start, stop, and delete Windows services from the command line — the scripting interface to the Service Control Manager, equivalent to the Services MMC snap-in but fully automatable.
Create, query, run, end, and delete scheduled tasks on local or remote Windows machines from the command prompt — the scripting interface to Windows Task Scheduler.
Set, display, and delete cmd.exe environment variables within the current session, perform integer arithmetic with /A, and read interactive user input with /P.
Initiate, schedule, abort, or force a shutdown, restart, logoff, hibernate, or sleep on a local or remote Windows machine from the command line — essential for scripted maintenance, patch automation, and remote administration.
Connect to remote hosts, transfer files, and forward ports over an encrypted channel using the OpenSSH client built into Windows 10 and later.
Bootstrap and drive the headless Sysinternals utilities — PsExec, Handle, PsList, Autoruns, ProcMon, ListDLLs — for process spelunking, file-lock hunting, autostart auditing and scripted system tracing on Windows.
Display detailed OS, hardware, and network configuration for the local or a remote Windows machine. Covers output formats, remote querying, filtering, and parsing in scripts.
Transfer ownership of files and directories to the current user or the Administrators group from an elevated command prompt — a prerequisite for modifying ACLs on system-protected paths.
End one or more running Windows processes by PID or image name from the command prompt, with options for force termination, process tree killing, filtering, and remote targets.
Display all running processes on a local or remote Windows machine with PID, memory usage, session, and optional service or module details — the cmd.exe equivalent of Task Manager for scripts.
Pause a batch script for a specified number of seconds with an optional keypress bypass — a reliable replacement for the ping-delay idiom and a safer alternative to sleep in Windows CMD scripts.
Trace the sequence of routers between your machine and a destination by sending probes with increasing TTL values — the go-to tool for locating where a network path breaks or introduces high latency.
Query, export, clear, and manage Windows Event Log channels from the command line — the primary CLI for event log automation, log archiving, and scripted log analysis on Windows.
Display the current user name, SID, group memberships, and privileges from the Windows command prompt — essential for auditing security context in scripts and support scenarios.
Query and manage Windows system information — hardware, software, processes, services, and more — from the command prompt using WMI classes and WMIC's SQL-like syntax.
Copy files and directory trees with attribute preservation, date filtering, exclusion lists, and verification. The step between copy and robocopy for most scripting needs.
Practical REXX patterns for z/OS automation, TSO commands, and ISPF services.
Complete reference for codex exec — scripted invocation, stdin piping, JSON event streams, output formats, exit codes, timeouts, and automation patterns for CI, git hooks, and shell pipelines.
Pattern-action language for structured text. Field splitting, built-in variables, arithmetic, string functions, arrays, BEGIN/END blocks, and practical data-processing recipes.
Comprehensive Bash scripting reference covering variables, parameter expansion, control flow, functions, arrays, string manipulation, arithmetic, traps, process substitution, and the Bash 5.3 in-shell command substitution forms.
Comprehensive fish shell reference covering syntax, variables, functions, abbreviations, completions, config files, path management, prompt customization, Fisher plugins, fish 4.x features (Rust rewrite), and migration from bash/zsh.
Slice, filter, map, and transform JSON data from the command line. Covers all essential filters, built-in functions, select, map, reduce, streaming, jq 1.7/1.8 additions, and real-world API response processing.
Practical Makefile patterns: targets, prerequisites, automatic variables, pattern rules, parallel builds, and a working lint/test/build/clean workflow for any project.
Non-interactive text transformation. Substitution, deletion, insertion, address ranges, in-place editing, and multi-line patterns with practical recipes.
Catch quoting bugs, missing checks, and POSIX portability mistakes in shell scripts. Covers every flag, severity levels, inline directives, CI/pre-commit integration, and the most common rules.
Parse command-line arguments with Python's stdlib argparse module. Covers positional/optional args, subparsers, nargs, validation, mutually exclusive groups, FileType, env-var fallbacks, and argcomplete.
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