Windows – Is it possible to make Ctrl+C as responsive as Ctrl+Break in the Windows 7 console

command lineconsolewindows 7

Is it possible to make Ctrl+C act like Ctrl+Break in the Windows 7 cmd.exe console?

By default Ctrl+C seems to only send a signal the next time the input buffer is read, where Ctrl+Break sends a signal immediately.

This makes Ctrl+C useless for ending processes because when I want to end a process I want to end it immediately.

I'm using Ctrl+Break for now but it's far harder to type.

It looks like in DOS you can add BREAK=ON to CONFIG.SYS to achieve this, but not in Windows 7?

Best Answer

There's no setting that I know of, but you can accomplish this with an AutoHotkey script.

The script

^c::
    WinGetClass, WinClass, A
    if(WinClass = "ConsoleWindowClass")
        SendPlay ^{CtrlBreak}
    else
        SendPlay ^c

How it works

^c specifies the key combination to modify: Ctrl + C (^ indicates Ctrl).
WinGetClass, WinClass, A stores the active window's title in the variable WinClass.
if(WinClass = "ConsoleWindowClass") ... else ... checks if WinClass macthes the string ConsoleWindowClass (the window class of the Windows 7 command prompt).
- If it does, SendPlay ^{CtrlBreak} simulates the key combination Ctrl + Break.
- Otherwise, SendPlay ^c simulates the key combination Ctrl + C.
  
  This way, other programs still behave as they should.

How to use

Download and install the latest version of AutoHotkey.
Save the above script as break-on.ahk, using your favorite text editor.
Double-click the file to run the script.
If you wish, copy the script (or a link to it) in the Startup folder.

Related Solutions

Emacs – Using to Control Command-Line Processes

I'm a linux/emacs biased person, so here's what I would try:

install cygwin with its version of emacs
run multiple shells within emacs. M-x shell launches a shell within emacs. If you give a prefix arg (C-u M-x shell), emacs will prompt you for the name to give to the shell buffer. This way you can have multiple shell buffers.
create bash aliases for the various tasks to run, for example create an alias called "mp" for something like "mplayer -option1 -option2 23"

Many people who aren't linux/cygwin inclined like PowerShell. This also provides aliases. Some people have written about running powershell inside emacs.

Windows – How to Open a Console Application with a Given Window Size

I spent a few hours today to implement a small C# application that can wrap another console application and adjust the window size of the console host.

console-wrapper is easy to use. It only expects a couple of command line parameters:

Usage: console-wrapper.exe [OPTIONS]

Options:

      --subject=VALUE        The application that should be started by the
                               console wrapper.
      --width=VALUE          The desired width of the console window.
      --height=VALUE         The desired height of the console window.
  -h, -?, --help             Shows this help message

--width and --height are used to set the size of the resulting console window. --subject can be used optionally, if it is omitted, the remaining parameters are treated as the command (with parameters) to start.

So the final call I'm using now in our startup script is:

START "MongoDB" database\console-wrapper.exe --width=140 --height=70 %~dp0database\mongodb\bin\mongod.exe --dbpath %~dp0database\data --rest

The resulting window will have the requested size and upon hitting Ctrl+C, the window will close (after having properly shut down the contained process).