Aliases in Windows command prompt

Question

I have added notepad++.exe to my Path in Environment variables.

Now in command prompt, notepad++.exe filename.txt opens the filename

Answer 1

If you're just going for some simple commands, you could follow these steps:

1. Create a folder called C:\Aliases
2. Add C:\Aliases to your path (so any files in it will be found every time)
3. Create a .bat file in C:\Aliases for each of the aliases you want

Maybe overkill, but unlike the (otherwise excellent) answer from @Argyll, this solves the problem of this loading every time.

For instance, I have a file called dig2.bat with the following in it:

@echo off
echo.
dig +noall +answer %1

Your np file would just have the following:

@echo off
echo.
notepad++.exe %1

Then just add the C:\Aliases folder to your PATH environment variable. If you have CMD or PowerShell already opened you will need to restart it.

FWIW, I have about 20 aliases (separate .bat files) in my C:\Aliases directory - I just create new ones as necessary. Maybe not the neatest, but it works fine.

UPDATE: Per an excellent suggestion from user @Mav, it's even better to use %* rather than %1, so you can pass multiple files to the command, e.g.:

@echo off
echo.
notepad++.exe %*

That way, you could do this:

np c:\temp\abc.txt c:\temp\def.txt c:\temp\ghi.txt

and it will open all 3 files.