Under linux spawning a new process is as easy as appending an & to the
command. In windows it’s not (obviously). I pretty quickly found out about the
start command. Not as elegant as the linux version, but still pretty
intuitive. Or, wait, not? It took me half a decade to find out how to use it
properly.
First i had a look at the help output, which can be invoked by the switch /?.
I’m not 100% sure, but i have in mind that this switch isn’t really
standardized, i think I also had to use /h or /help in the past. Anyway,
that’s not the sad part yet.
Reading through that, all you have to do is call start my_command.
Easy huh? No. It’s not.
After digging around this article lead me to
the solution: “title: Text for the CMD window title bar (required)”.
Title! Required!
Let me say that again. Title! Required!
First thought: Why?
Why is a title required? A title is clearly something optional, especially when
you’re starting a GUI application.
Second thought: Why? Why is that “required” not stated as such in the help
output? Not the slightest hint in the help output. And furthermore, isn’t it a
convention that required parameters are NOT surrounded by brackets? Don’t
brackets mean “optional”? Apparently, in the windows tooling environment all
this does not apply.
I know, windows is a GUI centered OS, and therefore the console didn’t evolve as nicely as it did in other OS’s. Nevertheless, every time I have to work on a console or write a batch file it gives me the creeps. Everything is so unbelievably clumsy. At least I found out about the Console project, which is a pretty decent replacement for the windows console. Copy/paste works as desired with keyboard shortcuts and you can resize the window. Resize the window! How cool is that! But that’s a different story…
