Command-Line – How to Run Internal CMD Command from the MSYS Shell

command linemsysmsysgit

The Windows CMD utility has a number of internal commands, such as mklink. How can they be used from the msys shell ?

From CMD's documentation, the /c switch can be used to execute a command and
exit; but this doesn't seem to work.

If I do cmd /c mklink the mklink command is not executed and the CMD shell is not exited.

Before pressing Enter:

enter image description here

After:

enter image description here

Process Monitor screenshot:

enter image description here

Trying to run the command as a background process: cmd /c mklink & apparently works – the mklink command is executed, but the CMD shell is not terminated. Every time Enter is pressed, CMD will become the active shell.

Best Answer

Search your %PATH% for cmd.cmd or cmd.bat. They may interfere with your cmd
Run Process Monitor and run your cmd /c mklink. Examine ProcMon log for really executed commands.

Related Solutions

Linux – Empty bash command line

Pressing Ctrl+U will empty the current line.

It's the default kill character on most terminals and it erases the current line (from the cursor to its beginning). The stty command can be used to get or set its value.

[dave@hal9000 ~]$ stty -a
speed 38400 baud; rows 23; columns 75; line = 0;
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = M-^?;
eol2 = M-^?; swtch = M-^?; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R;
werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; flush = ^O; min = 1; time = 0;
...
[dave@hal9000 ~]$ stty kill ^T # Set it to Ctrl-T

Be the way, werase stands for word erase, so Ctrl+W erases the word on the left of the cursor.

Windows 7 – What Happens When Clicking in the CMD Window?

When you select some text in the cmd.exe window, the process will carry on in the background until the next time it writes to Standard Output (or STDOUT, the data stream which is shown in the cmd.exe window).

When you exit the selection mode, the process will resume as normal.

You can test this by typing ping www.google.com -t into your cmd.exe window, and selecting some area of the output. You'll see it pause, and when you deselect the output will resume.

Edit: As per Fran's comment, you can use a tool such as Wireshark to see that activity does still happen after the point when you made the selection, and then stops.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – Empty bash command line

Windows 7 – What Happens When Clicking in the CMD Window?

Related Question