[OT] Windows PowerShell

Robert Fraser fraserofthenight at gmail.com
Sat Oct 25 17:07:45 PDT 2008


Bill Baxter wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Benji Smith <dlanguage at benjismith.net> wrote:
>>>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>>>> On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 10:23 AM, Benji Smith <dlanguage at benjismith.net>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>>>>>>>> Anyone using a shell for Windows that works and supports UTF-8
>>>>>>>>> properly?
>>>>>>>> A regular Windows console supports UTF-8 to some extent:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> * Change console font to Lucida Console
>>>>>>>> * issue "chcp 65001"
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> You can even get more fonts into there with a bit of hackery.
>>>>>>> I did that but "type <filewith-utf8.txt>"  still prints garbage.
>>>>>> That's weird. My machine (WinXp Sp3) has no problem printing UTF-8 to the
>>>>>> console. The only special thing I did was changed the font to Lucide
>>>>>> Console.
>>>>> Ok.  Thanks for the info.  Knowing that it has actually worked for at
>>>>> least one person gives me motivation to try again.
>>>>>
>>>>> --bb
>>>> Write a tiny little D program and see what you get on the console:
>>>>
>>>>   import tango.io.Stdout;
>>>>   void main() {
>>>>      Stdout("spade, club, heart, diamond: \u2660\u2663\u2665\u2666");
>>>>   }
>>>>
>>>> I don't know anything about the "type" command, and whether it supports
>>>> UTF-8. But the console itself ought to be able to handle it. Try compiling
>>>> the above code and see what happens.
>>>>
>>>> --benji
>>> Ah, I see.  I guess more what I want to know is if I had utf-8 source
>>> code and the D compiler spit out a message about one of the lines,
>>> would that error message come out as garbage?  Same for ddbg -- if I'm
>>> debugging and say "ps" for "print source" will the result be garbage.
>>>   I was thinking that "type" would be a simple test if that sort of
>>> thing would work.
>>>
>>> But maybe type is just borked.  I did try "cat" and "more" too I
>>> think, with same result, though.
>>>
>>> --bb
>> Msys does autocomplete. it's not perfect but it works. the path will
>> look unix like though.. i.e.
>> /c/program files/...
> 
> Right that's what Cygwin does too, and it's useless if I want to call
> the DMD compiler.
> 
>      dmd foo.d /c/libs/mydlib.lib
> 
> "Error:  what do you think this is, Linux?"
> 
> 
>> from what I know (winXP sp 2) - console works for unicode Except for RTL
>> languages like Hebrew. as someone else already noted, this is legacy
>> tech which you shouldn't be using anyway. I don't know if it's fixed in
>> SP3 or not but the new way from MS is their powershell tool based on C#.
>> there are also other 3rd party stuff as well..
> 
> Yeh, i've heard of that.  Do you (or anyone) have any actual
> experience with PowerShell?  It doesn't seem to be standard equipment
> on my new Vista box even.  Does it require a separate download?
> Strange if it really is supposed to be "the new way".
> 
> --bb

PowerShell is MS's concession that there are things better done in a 
console environment, especially for developers & powerusers. And, yes, 
it works very well (I'm a fan...). It also contains aliases for all the 
GNU tools (i.e. ls => dir, etc.).

It doesn't come as the default on most OSes simply because Microsoft 
doesn't expect the average home user to need it. It does come default on 
Windows Server 2008, because Microsoft expects it to be a useful utility 
to server admins.


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