Erwin Waterlander

|WCD| dos2unix/unix2dos| MinGW libintl| libunistring packages| Man| DosDir| Interesting links| ASM| Verjaardagkalender| ZSH for Windows| About Erwin|

WCD - Wherever Change Directory

chdir for DOS and Unix, w/C src

Wcd is a command-line program to change directory fast. It saves time typing at the keyboard. One needs to type only a part of a directory name and wcd will jump to it. Wcd has a fast selection method in case of multiple matches and allows aliasing and banning of directories. Wcd also includes a full screen interactive directory tree browser with speed search.

Wcd was modeled after Norton Change Directory (NCD). NCD appeared first in The Norton Utilities, Release 4, for DOS in 1987, published by Peter Norton. NCD was written by Brad Kingsbury.

Examples of wcd usage:
wcd Desk
will change to directory /home/waterlan/Desktop

But also
wcd *top
will do that.

Wcd is free to use and you can get the source code too.

Features of wcd:

  • Full screen interactive directory browser with speed search and zoom in/out.
  • Present the user a list in case of multiple matches.
  • Wildcards *, ? and [SET] supported.
  • Directory stack, push pop.
  • Subdir definition possible. E.g. wcd subdira/subdirb
  • Long directory names support in Win95/98/NT DOS-box
  • Windows LAN UNC paths supported.
  • Change drive and directory at once.
  • Alias directories.
  • Ban directories.
  • Exclude directories.
  • Alternate stack per shell or terminal.
  • Multi user: Jump to folders of your colleagues.
  • Multi platform:
  • Native language support: Dutch, English, Finnish, German, Spanish
  • Unicode Level 3 support (all UCS characters including double width and combining characters).
  • Option to ignore diacritics for Latin-based scripts.

    • WCD is free software, distributed under GNU General Public License, version 2.

    View the README or WHATSNEW or COPYING or FAQ or TODO or PROBLEMS.

    SCREENSHOTS.

    Manual pages in HTML format.
    Manual pages in text format.
    Manual pages in PostScript format.
    Manual pages in PDF format.

    How to install wcd on DOS, Windows, or OS/2.
    How to build wcd for DOS, Windows, or OS/2 with GCC.
    How to build wcd for DOS, Windows, or OS/2 with Watcom C.
    How to build wcd for Windows with Microsoft Visual C.
    How to build and install wcd on Unix/Linux/Cygwin.

    How to open wcd best match directory in Windows Explorer.

    Download WCD:

    Latest version: 5.2.4-beta10 May 21 2013

    Latest stable version: 5.2.3 Oct 29 2012

    For previous releases see: Old versions of wcd

    Ready-to-Run binaries

    TIP: DOS/Windows with PDCurses interface: Set environment variable PDC_RESTORE_SCREEN so that the screen will be restored after wcd exits. Add this to your autoexec.bat file: set PDC_RESTORE_SCREEN=1

    Binaries of wcd for other platforms are welcome. Send them by e-mail to

    Source Code

    Comments and patches are welcome. Also help with translations is appreciated.

    Latest development version from Subversion repository:

    Wcd moved to a new subversion repository on Dec 11 2012. Check out the new repo with this command:

    svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/wcd/code/trunk wcd-code

    Beta version

    Complete list of changes: WHATSNEW
    Here is a win32 version built with a recent version of ncursesw. It has better support for combining characters than pdcursesw.

    Source code libintl DLL

    The win32 binaries are packaged with with a patched version of MinGW's libintl DLL that has builtin relocation support. See http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/libintl.html

    libunistring packages

    See libunistring on how to get libunistring libraries for Cygwin/MinGW/MinGW-w64

    WCD related links

    Old versions of wcd

    Other directory changers

    Notification of new versions

    Want to be notified whenever a new version of WCD arrives? Send an email to with subject wcd add. Write in the email for which operating system you use wcd. (Your e-mail address will only be used for notification of new versions of wcd. It will not be given to any third party.) You will not get a notification of all beta versions, only when there are important changes in a beta release. To remove your e-mail address from the list send an email with subject wcd remove.

    You can also subscribe to the wcd project page at http://freecode.com/projects/wcd or http://sourceforge.net/projects/wcd/. Beta versions are never notified via Freecode or SourceForge.

    dos2unix / unix2dos

    The dos2unix/unix2dos home page has moved to http://waterlan.home.xs4all.nl/dos2unix.html

    Man 1.3

    A 16 bit DOS port of Eli Zaretskii's man clone for DJGPP v2.

    This is a simple `man' clone. It can be used to display Unix man pages, both formatted and unformatted. It can also be used to display pure-text docs, provided that the directory where these files are kept is mentioned in the MANPATH environment variable; this makes it especially suited to the PC environment where typically each program or package come with some kind of text-only documentation.

    A 16 bit 'groff' is currently missing, so unformatted man pages cannot be viewed yet.

    View the README and ChangeLog.

    Get the 'less' pager from the gnuish collection.
    GNUish Project

    DosDir 2.1a

    Download here the latest version of DOSDIR. DOSDIR is freeware. Partly under the GNU General Public Licence conditions.
    It uses the DOS directory framework to provide a portable interface for MS-DOS/UNIX/VMS application programmers. DOSDIR minimizes the OS- specific directory access code for applications allowing programmers to concentrate on the application itself and not on the low-level directory and file structure. DOSDIR applications will run on their native operating systems with the appropriate file syntax and handling, which is expected for that platform.

    DosDir is written by Jason Mathews. View the README.

    Verjaardagkalender

    verjrdag 1.07 (31 januari 2007) - Verjaardagkalender.

    Verjrdag is een eenvoudige verjaardagkalender voor DOS, Windows en Unix. Verjrdag waarschuwt vooraf en achteraf. Het aantal dagen vooraf en achteraf is in te stellen.

    Verjrdag is a simple birthday calendar for DOS, Windows en Unix. Verjrdag warns before and after a birthday. The number of days before and after can be adjusted.

    (Gebruik pkunzip met -d optie.)

    Another Signal Manager (DOS/Windows/Linux version)

    asm-1.1.1.zip ASM 1.1.1 for DOS, Windows and Linux, including documentation and source code. Sep 8 2007 (1188 kB)

    A digital signal processing program for educational purposes.

    After 10 years I finally took some effort to port ASM for DOS to Windows and Linux. It was a piece of cake. The Allegro graphical library I used for DOS, had become multi-platform in the meantime.

    View the README and WHATSNEW

    SCREENSHOTS.

    Manual, updated Sep 8 2007:

    Adobe acroread Free PDF viewer
    Ghostscript, Ghostview and GSview Free PostScript and PDF viewer

    ZSH for Windows

    Amol Desphande made a native Windows port of zsh. Works also on Windows 9x. UNC paths are supported directly, no mapping to drive letters needed. Here you find the latest version made by Amol. He is not maintaining this any more. His last change was on Jan 27 2001.

    The work of Amol is continued since Jan 2010 in the WinZsh project, with recent updates.

    Interesting links:

    free software programming
    GNU homepage. Project of the Free Software Foundation.
    Free Software (Open SourceŽ)
    Cygwin A collection of tools which provide a Linux look and feel environment for Windows.
    MinGW: Minimalist GNU for Windwos Project of a Windows GNU C/C++ compiler
    Dev-C++ Free Integrated Development Environment for the C/C++ Mingw compiler
    DJGPP homepage. Project of a 32 bit DOS version of the Unix GNU C/C++ compiler + utilities
    LCC-Win32 homepage Windows C compiler. Including IDE and debugger.
    Open Watcom homepage Free DOS/Windows/OS2 C/C++ and Fortran compiler. Including IDE and debugger.

    The Free Country Free Programmer's Resources.
    Allegro homepage. A game programming library for DJGPP. Graphics, sound, joystick, FLI, timer, etc, etc.
    Perl Combines the best of C, awk, sed and sh.
    Python An interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language.
    Wotsit's File Format Collection The Programmer's File Format Collection
    The GUI Toolkit, Framework Page Libraries for Graphical programming. All platforms.
    RHIDE An IDE for DOS (DJGPP) and Linux (text console) with he good feeling of Borlands IDE from version 3.1
    Gratis compilers (no payment)
    Digital Mars C and C++ Compilers for Win32, Win16, DOS32 and DOS.
    Free Operating Systems
    Minix Free Unix, runs also on PC XT
    GNU/Linux Free Unix clone.
    FreeBSD Free Unix for the i386.
    OpenBSD Free multiplatform Unix. Very robust and secure.
    NetBSD Free multiplatform Unix. Extremely portable.
    FreeDOS FreeDOS Project home page.
    Freedows Free OS that runs DOS-, windows 3.1/95/NT-, Linux- and Mac-applications.
    ReactOS Open source project to develop a Windows NT compatible OS.
    JOS Java Operating System.
    Freeware (archives, links collections etc.)
    ibiblio.org (MetaLab) (was SunSITE) Freeware archive
    Simtel.Net Keith Petersen's worldwide distribution network for Shareware, Freeware, and Public Domain programs.
    Garbo, A Shareware Programs Distribution Library
    Info-ZIP Home Page Portable Zip and Unzip compatible with PKZIP
    Games
    Games Domain
    The Official Epic MegaGames Home Page
    Westwood Studios Welcome Mat.
    id Software Inc.
    Games Radar.