How To Use Command Prompt As A Text Editor

[coolcat50 0]

In this tutorial, I will show you how you can use Command Prompt to create text files. It is very simple and you can also use it to write output from a command into a text file. This can be particularly useful when you need documentation from a DOS program in a text file when you use the help command or something similar. In order to do this you simply use this DOS command.

CONSOLE

echo Text >> test.txt

This will create a new text file called test and echo the contents into it. If we wanted to write a 2 line document, we could do something like:

CONSOLE

echo Hello >> test.txtecho Person >> test.txt

The Command Prompt automatically does linebreaks each time the command is used.I also stated that you can put documentation into a text file this way.I will use the Perl documentation command as an example.

CONSOLE

perldoc perl >> perldoc.txt

That will put the output from perldoc into the file perldoc.txt.Thanks for reading this material and have fun doing text writing the old school way.

[sunzoje 0]

It's really nice. But what if I have to create multiple line documents. Can I just type and echo it to the txt file?

[coolcat50 0]

Whenever you use the echo command, it automatically creates a linebreak. I think it might not be able to create linebreaks in a single echo statement though.

[anachro 0]

could you explain this better for people who don't get command prompt/learning command prompt?

[suberatu 0]

I don't see myself using something like this anytime in the future, but knowledge is always a good thing. Thanks for the tutorial.

[iGuest 3]

Replying to suberatuWhat if I want edit the first line of a text document "//Easting, Northing, Depth" to be "Easting, Northing, Depth" but the file is too large to open in any text editing program (700 mb)

[iGuest 3]

Well that is one way to do it, but an easier way to edit text is available. Pretend we have a file in our desktop called "test.Txt" without the quotations. To edit this file, you can type the following command:Copy con test.TxtTo use this, you should be in the same directory as the file, so, in a Windows computer your command would actually look like this:C:Documents and SettingsUserDesktop> copy con test.TxtBE WARNED: This overwrites ALL OF YOUR TEXT! It is very useful to create a new document, but for editing an existing document it would be easier to just type this:Notepad test.TxtSo it opens instead of overwriting-reply by Jesse

[iGuest 3]

Is there any way to echo a variable into the file, like thisecho %variable% >> test.txt