Graphical User Interface vs Command Line Interface

In this activity you are going to compare GUI and CLI and explain the difference between the two and you will carry out certain tasks using the CLI and explain which is better to use and gives you more control.

Help:

Copy ColorConsole.exe to a newly created folder in your documents

Tasks 1 (6 minutes)

We started this last week and if you cannot remember, have a go at some of the commands below.

Task / CMD command
  1. Show the ip address of the computer
/ Ipconfig Or ipconfig / all
  1. show the files and folders for the current directory
/ Dir /a
  1. create a folder called test
/ Mkdir test
  1. create a folder called test 2 (don’t forget the space)
/ Mkdir “test 2”
  1. change directory and access test 2 folder
/ Cd “test 2”
  1. Inside this directory create a notepad file called notes.txt
/ Notepad start test.txt

Tasks 2 (12 minutes)

Task / CMD command
  1. Practising changing between different directories

  1. Access the root directory
/ Tip: cd something
  1. Delete a file or folder
/ Don’t try it just copy the command across!
  1. What will the following command do:
del *.txt
  1. ping an ip address

  1. What is the purpose of ping?

Tasks 3 (15 minutes)

  1. Find out what a batch file is
  2. Find out why we use them
  3. Create a simple batch file that will make a folder called test

Clues

Save the text file as file.bat

Create a text file

Add a pause

Use the appropriate command

Tutorials

Create other batch files to get the hang of it and add more complexity to your batch files.

Tasks 4 ()

Create a short report that compared Command Line Interface vs Graphical User Interface

Help section

CD - Change Directory

The CD command is very simple to use. All commands are relative to the directory that you are in. Therefore, using the example output of a "dir" that is shown above, if you want to change to the "Windows" directory, you would type

CD Windows

If you want to change to the "system" directory (which is a sub directory of "windows"), you would enter

CD System

However if you knew that you wanted to change to the system directory immediately, you could type this command instead:

CD Windows\System

However if you were already deep in another directory (for example c:\ documents and settings \username\ local settings) and then wanted to move directly to windows\system then you can do that by putting in an initial backwards slash:

CD \Windows\System

This tells the command to go to the root of the drive, then to the directory Windows and system.

Moving Back Up

You can also move back up the tree, instead of down.

If you want to just return to the root of the drive (C:\) you would just type

cd \ orcd\

If you wanted to just go back one level (to use the earlier example, you were in c:\windows\system and you wanted to be in c:\windows) you would just type:

cd..

Alternatively, if you want to access a totally different directory, for example "Program Files" you could type

cd program filesorcd "program files"

When typing directories to change to, if the directory name is unique, then you can use wild cards. For example

cd program*

Source:

Find out something else you can do with command prompt .