In the Reader to Reader article
“Hidden Option, Free Utility
Can Be Real Time-Savers
Reader to Reader
If You Copy File Paths
Often” (November 2007,
InstantDoc ID 95953), Alex K.
Angelopoulos shows how to
use Windows Vista’s Copy as
Path option and Ninotech’s
Path Copy utility to copy
file paths that appear in
Windows Explorer. There’s
another way you can copy
file paths. If you open a
command prompt window
and drag and drop a file into
that window, it will paste the
full path onto the command
line. Windows has had this
feature since Windows NT,
so Alex could use this filepath
copying technique on
pre-Vista machines that don’t
have Path Copy installed. For
Vista, however, he’ll have to
use the Copy as Path option
(right-click while pressing
Shift, then select Copy as
Path) because Microsoft
decided to remove this functionality
from Vista (and
probably from Windows Server
2008 as well).
Because I do most of my
work from a command prompt
window, I rarely open Windows
Explorer. When I need a Windows
Explorer window opened
pointing to the current directory
in a command prompt
window, I type
start .
I find this to be a lot faster
than opening My Computer
and navigating to the folder,
especially if you use filename
completion when navigating
at the command prompt. You
can also open a specific folder
by passing the path instead of a
period. (The period stands for
the current folder. You can also
use two consecutive periods to
stand for the parent folder.)
—Toby Ovod-Everett
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