DOS/PS commands

Posted on October 10, 2022December 24, 2025Back End, Virtual Machine

windows cmd or powershell

Personal note

if you also have python experience, some helpful analogs are:

	python	PS(powershell)
variables	var	$var
for loop	for i in ls: …	foreach($i in $ls){ … } or for($i=1;$i -le 10; $i++){echo @($i*2)}

Batch run (jobs)

Below is example of batch run a python script in designated virtual environment as a parallelizable job. Note the variables is passed into the job using -ArgumentList keyword. @() is a sub-expression operator. It can be used to create empty array by arr=@(). It is used to run algorithmic operation (multiplication) here.

for($i=4;$i -le 10; $i++){Start-Job {conda activate ENV d:; cd “D:\PATH”; python .\SCRIPT.py –DS $args[0]} -ArgumentList @($i*10);}

File management

rename with PS

Replace the same section of strings with Powershell.
Ref: {StackExchange}

get-childitem *.mp3 | foreach { rename-item $_ $_.Name.Replace("Radiohead -", "") }

1	get-childitem *.mp3 \| foreach { rename-item $_ $_.Name.Replace("Radiohead -", "") }

Ref: {Link}

Get-ChildItem *.jpg | Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '.jpg','.png' }

1	Get-ChildItem *.jpg \| Rename-Item -NewName { $_.Name -replace '.jpg','.png' }

or a more linux way, thanks to the aliases in powershell

$files=ls; foreach($fs in $files){$fn = $fs.Name; mv $fn $fn.replace('Pattern A', 'Pattern B')}

1	$files=ls; foreach($fs in $files){$fn = $fs.Name; mv $fn $fn.replace('Pattern A', 'Pattern B')}

A demo of for loop and if statement

foreach($f in ls){echo $f.Name; $count=(ls $f|measure).Count; if($count -ne 10000){echo $count}}

1	foreach($f in ls){echo $f.Name; $count=(ls $f\|measure).Count; if($count -ne 10000){echo $count}}

$(var_name) to specify variables
| is pipeline, measure return number of rows, similar to count
powershell comparison operators: -eq is equal and -ne not equal
foreach syntax: foreach(condition){operations}
if syntax, if(condition){statement}

Zip & Unzip

powershell

foreach($fs in $files){Expand-Archive $fs -DestinationPath "D:\AYX\Rawdon\Supplement_231005\ehm New data\unzipped\$fs.Name.replace('.zip', '')" }

1	foreach($fs in $files){Expand-Archive $fs -DestinationPath "D:\AYX\Rawdon\Supplement_231005\ehm New data\unzipped\$fs.Name.replace('.zip', '')" }

similarly, to zip, use Compress_archive command as

Compress_Archive -Path {Files, add to the list} -DestinationPath {YourName.zip}

1	Compress_Archive -Path {Files, add to the list} -DestinationPath {YourName.zip}

dos with 7zip

When unzipping 7z files but do not have permission to install, one can use 7zr.exe {Download Link}.
But one must call it with full directory. I tried doskey that claims to resemble ‘alias’ in linux, but it returns help docs only.

{full_dir}\7zr.exe \? # see help
doskey {full_dir}\7zr.exe 7zr # the alias

1 2	{full_dir}\7zr.exe \? # see help doskey {full_dir}\7zr.exe 7zr # the alias