Avoid frustration and display a full Windows command-prompt history

If you often work from a Microsoft Windows command prompt, chances are you know that you can cycle through a list of all the commands that you’ve typed in a particular session using the up and down arrows on your keyboard. You can also change the size of this history list by clicking the command button in the upper left corner, selecting the Properties command, and then changing the buffer size number on the Options tab under Command History.

By default, the buffer size is set to 50, which means that the command history can potentially contain a lot of commands, making it difficult to cycle through all the commands that you’ve typed by using the up and down arrows on your keyboard. However, there’s an easier way to see all those commands.

At the command prompt, enter the following:

doskey /history

You’ll see a full listing of all the commands that you’ve entered in a current session (Figure A).

Figure A

A list shows my last few commands have been ping commands

Note: This tip applies to Windows XP Home, Windows XP Professional, and Windows Vista.

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