Shell Utilities

Created 27 April 2002, last updated 27 November 2007

I use Windows, and I like using the command prompt (shell, for Unix types). But there are things I wish were different. So, when possible, I write Python scripts to help make it a little better.

For the most part, these tools aren’t just for Windows, they’ve just been created initially for that environment. If you want to use these on other platforms, you may need to add a little bit of code. If you do, let me know, and I’ll fold it back in.

These are personal tools, meaning they do just what I want them to do. There are many things they could be made to do, and I don’t mind making them do those things, I just haven’t needed them to. If you have ideas (or wishes), let me know. I like writing code when I know someone really wants to use it.

• wh.py, a replacement for the Unix ‘which’ command.
• showfiles.py, a file lister (like ‘dir’).
• countlines.py, which counts the lines in files.
• xdir.py, a replacement for ‘cd’.
• ramp.py, for generating simple binary data.
• hexdump.py, for displaying binary data in hex.
• shenv.py, for showing environment variables.
• readurl.py, for reading a URL.
• pygrep.py, for searching files.
• makeroom.py, for deleting directories to make room on a disk.
• m3utree.py, for creating playlists from a tree of MP3 files.
• blameall.py, providing “p4 annotate -a” for Subversion.