Windows Symbolic Link Equivalent - But ghetto and not at all

Say you want to create a directory that points to another directory. For example something in your home directory that point to a long and convoluted path that you often have to go down. In Linux the answer is pretty easy, the ln command. Here is a decent forum post on using the ln command.

But I'm bound to the world of Microsoft. There must be some DOS equivalent right? Well a little Googling found me a discussion on junctions. My take away is that they aren't quite the same thing, and they aren't well documented. So instead I took an approach that I feel a little bit more comfortable with.

What I ended up settling on was creating some batch files in my home directory with contents similar to

cd "C:\Some\Long\Directory\Path"

Ghetto right? But for me the combo of

- Windows Key + R

- "cmd" + Enter

- MyBatFile Enter

is all I need. With a little tab completing it is quite fast. Before I was getting pretty fast at tab completing through my entire long directory name, so this is a definite improvement from how I was operating.

You could also make shortcuts on the desktop or in a custom toolbar off the start menu of the form

cmd /k cd "C:\My\Dir"

if you like a little point and click in your life.

Finally you could get all of your shortcuts in your PATH environment variable. Then you could jump around without having be in your home directory.

I know this isn't a very impressive tip. I guess what I'm really just conveying a more philosophical lesson. Sometimes quick and dirty is the way to go. Especially when it is saving time on something as simple as directory navigating.